


The Eye of the Storm

by LunaCatriona



Series: Black Water [4]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, F/F, F/M, Gen, Trauma, aftermath of death, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-03-02 14:02:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 56,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13319676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaCatriona/pseuds/LunaCatriona
Summary: "If I could face them; if I could make amends; with all my shadows; I'd bow my head, and welcome them; but I feel it burning; like when the winter wind; stops my breathing; are you really gonna love me when I'm gone? I fear you won't; I fear you don't."- 'I of the Storm' by Of Monsters and MenIn the aftermath of the incident on the bank of Loch an Righ, nobody has come out unscathed. Malcolm Tucker, however, is in danger of destroying himself and his marriage. It's a storm, and he's stuck in the centre of it.





	1. Three Months

Not for the first time in the last three months, an almighty fight had broken out in the Tucker household as the children slept.

Malcolm Tucker was sick of this argument. It came up at least twice a week, and neither he nor his wife were willing to back down. Both believed they were right – of course they did, or else they wouldn’t be at one another’s fucking throats every other day.

“You can’t fucking _force_ her into a doctor’s office!” Malcolm bellowed. It must have been the hundredth time he’d said those words. It was almost a routine, and it was in danger of driving him mad. “She’s fourteen, Nic’la! Even if you get her through the door, you can’t fucking _make_ her speak!”

“Want a bet?” Nicola snarled at him. “She can’t keep going like this, Malcolm! She’s not eating properly, she’s withdrawn – Malcolm, she hasn’t fucking slept a full night on her own for nearly _three months_!”

Malcolm crossed the room to her, trying to find a way to make her understand why they could not force Ella to see a doctor or a counsellor, even if that was what they believed to be best for their daughter. It didn’t help that Malcolm couldn’t tell Nicola the real reason behind Ella’s decline, for he had promised he wouldn’t break that confidence until asked to. Ella simply did not want her mother to know the truth about what happened the night James Murray died. As far as Nicola knew, James died in the struggle for the gun, and nobody knew whose finger pulled the trigger. It was the fact Ella knew better that slowly destroyed the girl.

“If we force her to speak before she’s ready, we might do more damage than good,” Malcolm said, his voice still loud. “And if we fucking take the choice away from her, she might never fucking trust us again! I’m fucking amazed she trusts us at all, the amount of shit she’s gone through!”

“And if we don’t,” Nicola yelled, “she might never recover from it! I’m her mother, for fuck’s sake! I have the right to get my child healthcare if and when she needs it. _I_ am the mother and _she_ is the child, and it’s about time the pair of you fucking accepted that!”

Malcolm looked skyward, beckoning the patience not to tell his wife she was treating Ella like she was an imbecile, not an intelligent, aware, mature fourteen-year-old. “You’re upset, Nicola, I know that. Of course you fucking are – I am too – but it does no good whatso-fucking-ever to bully-”

“Bully?!” Nicola sneered angrily.

Malcolm could have kicked himself. But fuck it. He was trying to protect Ella here, not make Nicola feel like Mother of the Fucking Century. “Yes, Nicola, if you drag her into that office against her will and nag her ‘til she speaks whether she’s fucking ready to or not, you’re fucking bullying her!”

She was furious. He could see her blood pressure increasing by the nanosecond. When she next spoke, her voice trembled with rage. “You know what? No. You do _not_ get a say in this. You’re not her father. You have no fucking right to tell me what to do about _my_ daughter’s health!”

He would never admit it to her – he would never give her the satisfaction of knowing she had hurt him – but that stung like a fucking acid bath. It was something she could never take back, and that he could never forget she said. How could she say that when, in the uncertainty of whether or not she would survive cancer, she had been prepared to leave him a single parent to her children? Was he their dad only when it fucking suited Nicola?

“Fuck this,” he growled in her face. “Fuck you.”

Too angry to look at Nicola, he walked out of the living room and pulled on his coat and his shoes, and grabbed his car keys. “Where the fuck are you going?!” Nicola demanded.

“Out,” he snapped.

“Out,” she repeated scathingly. “Fucking brilliant. Yeah, you go out and leave all the fucking responsibility to me. Just fucking go.”

Malcolm forced himself not to speak, for he knew that if he did, he might just destroy his marriage. Considering he was the one who managed to get Ella to eat and sleep what little she did, it was fucking grossly unfair of Nicola to claim she took on all the responsibility. He was doing far better with Ella than she was, partly because he knew the truth and partly because he was actually treating the girl like a fucking person with her own free will, not a prisoner without the capacity to think for herself. But to remind Nicola of that would only anger her, and he didn’t want her to kick him out.

He turned his back on Nicola and stalked out the front door, slamming it behind him.

Didn’t that fucking car crash of a woman realise how much fucking pressure he was under? Wasn’t it obvious at work, when he tore every MP and civil servant in his path to shreds, whether they’d done anything to deserve it or were completely innocent? And hadn’t she realised that when he had knocked everything off Bella Whyte’s desk in temper this afternoon, he had lost control of himself under the strain of trying to keep both the Government and his own family functioning?

Fucking hell, Bella hadn’t even really done anything wrong; yes, she had shown up several of her fellow MPs as opportunist pricks who claimed about ten times as much in expenses as they needed to, but on reflection, it was better she highlighted that than the Daily Mail. The point she had made was a valid one – that if she could live in London, travel back and forth to the Isle of Skye regularly, raise two children and pay for the services and upkeep of an au pair without claiming expenses for everything she possibly could, why were some of her colleagues claiming at least ten times what she did when they already lived within commuting distance of London?

But Malcolm had not been able to see it that way at the time. All he had seen was Bella making approximately half of her peers look incredibly immoral, and had told her that her archaic Traveller values of taking nothing without giving in return and expecting others to do the same had no place in Westminster, and if she wanted to live that way, she should take her family and go back to living out of a bender camp. Bella had been fucking livid with him, and accused him of racism. Outraged, Malcolm had allowed all restraint to abandon him and had knocked the contents of his daughter’s desk to the floor. She currently wasn’t speaking to him, and Malcolm was taking Euan’s advice to leave her overnight to cool off.

And Nicola knew this. Malcolm knew Bella had told her stepmother exactly what her dad had done – she always did. But Nicola, in all her self-absorbed wisdom, had not allowed that to stop her from fucking fighting him until they both were blind to themselves and one another.

With nowhere else to go, Malcolm got into his car and drove in the direction of his mother-in-law, Victoria’s, home. Though formidable and blunt, she was forward-thinking and, above all, she listened to him when he spoke.

Between his children and his wife, Malcolm was quickly finding himself at his wit’s end on a nightly basis. The children – the ones that were actually children – were all traumatised and all let it show in different ways. Though they had managed to get Sophie to see a counsellor, she was still so quiet that she barely spoke. She was, Malcolm acknowledged, always a quiet, introverted, self-searching girl. But she had not been closed off like this. And Ben, well, he was angry. The problem wasn’t that he was angry – the boy had every right to be angry – but that he was aggressive and hurtful towards his sisters.

Ella, though, she was breaking at the cracks. The knowledge she had fired the bullet that killed James, and that she could remember what it looked like when someone had half their face blown apart, stopped her from sleeping, from eating, from socialising…the only thing that seemed to matter to her was her schoolwork. Nicola was right in that Ella had not slept alone a full night since returning from Scotland. Every night without fail, she woke up terrified and panic-ridden, and could not go back to sleep without either Malcolm or Nicola beside her. It was exhausting, but it was part of being Ella’s dad, to do what he could to make her feel safe.

Malcolm parked the car outside Victoria’s house, got out and knocked on her door. When she opened it, she looked up at him with a look of disdain. “What the fuck’s happened now?”

“I had to walk away,” he said, “before I said anything that could get me a one-way ticket to a fucking divorce.”

Victoria sighed and shook her head, but stood aside to let him into her home, as she always did. “Was it about Ella again?” she asked as he hung his coat up. “Because if I’ve told Nicola once, I’ve told her a million fucking times – I didn’t railroad her into anything at that age. The decision to try therapy was hers and hers alone.”

“Yeah,” Malcolm said distractedly. Again, he’d had this conversation so many times that there was a fucking script running through his mind as Victoria spoke.

Victoria handed him a glass of whisky. “What Nicola doesn’t understand is therapy doesn’t actually work unless you’re there because you want to start getting better. No kid who’s chucked in that room by their mother ever heals. They have to choose it for themselves. But that’s Nicola for you. She’s trying to control things that can’t be controlled. It’s the same as her ingenious plan to fuck off to Edinburgh, or not tell you she had cancer – she has to be in control of _something_ when everything’s falling to bits. But she doesn’t see she can’t be in complete control of Ella.”

Malcolm drained his glass in one and leaned forwards, his head in his hands. There was too much swimming around up there for him to pick any of it apart into logic or reason. He was angry with Nicola, upset for Ella, stressed out about Bella…the whole family was falling to pieces; it was almost a surprise to him every morning he had the energy to get out of bed.

“I don’t get what’s traumatised Ella this badly though,” mused Victoria. Malcom’s head snapped up to look at her. “I mean, I know she was scared, and she saw Nicola nearly drown, but that night she stayed over here, Malcolm, she was _petrified_. She was screaming like a fucking banshee. I don’t think she even knew where she was when she woke up.”

He watched her carefully, trying to figure out if she was genuinely oblivious, or if she knew and was trying to get him to own up to it. But how could she know? Malcolm hadn’t told anyone, and if Ella hadn’t told Nicola, she wasn’t going to tell Victoria.

“What?” Victoria asked. “What is it?”

Malcolm rubbed his eyes; the whisky only intensified his feeling of exhaustion. He had to tell her. If not for Ella, then for his own sanity. It wouldn’t be the first time he confided his darkness to Victoria, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last, either. “You can’t tell anyone,” he said. “Especially not fucking Nicola. Ella made it explicitly fucking clear she doesn’t want Nicola to know.”

“Malcolm, boy, you’re scaring me now,” Victoria cautioned him.

He groaned and said, “Ella pulled the trigger. When they were fighting over the gun, she accidentally pulled the trigger. She says she saw half of James’ face get shot off.”

Victoria covered her mouth with her hand for a moment. “Fucking hell,” she whispered. “Oh, God.” She took her hand away from her face and said, “Christ, no wonder she’s a mess.”

“I know,” nodded Malcolm. “And I know she needs help to deal with it, but I’m not going to drag her by the scruff of the fucking neck like Nicola wants to, either.”

She frowned for a moment. “Have you tried talking to Ella about the benefits of talking about it?”

“She won’t fucking listen,” he grumbled. “She just dismisses it.”

“Have you told her about you?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well,” Victoria began, and Malcolm was unsettled by the uncharacteristic caution in her tone, “you found your father’s body after he hanged and shot himself. And you’ve said before you wished you’d been able to get help when you were a kid. Maybe Ella might listen to that. Maybe if her dad is telling her not to pass up an opportunity he never had, she might just listen.”

That idea was one that had never occurred to Malcolm, but one that, in the weeks after Katie died, he had employed to a certain extent to get Nicola to seek help. But to tell his daughter the full extent of it, to tell her that he had taken that pain out on his sister and that he had let it almost destroy him? He didn’t think he could do that.

He was spared further thought when his phone rang. It was Nicola and, angry as he was with her, he almost didn’t answer it. The only reason he did was that he knew it could have been about one of the kids. “Yeah,” he said curtly, clearing his throat.

“Malcolm, come home,” Nicola ordered him. Her voice was full of panic and stress. “Sophie, Ben, go back to bed! Malcolm, just fucking come home, will you?! Ella’s losing her fucking mind over here!” And sure enough, he could hear Ella’s sobs bordering on screams in the background. “Sophie! Bed! Jesus, Malcolm, will you just come home and see to your daughter?!”

“Oh, so I _am_ her dad now, am I?” he retorted.

“Oh, fucking grow up.” Nicola hung up on him.

Malcolm stood up, resigned to the fact that no matter what state his marriage was in, he could not leave Ella in the care of someone who was as freaked out as she was. “I’ve got to go home,” he said.

“I’ll drive you,” offered Victoria. “You’re knackered and you’ve had a drink.”

“I’m fine-”

“Don’t argue, kid,” she glared at him. “Get your coat.”


	2. Into the Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Tereshkova for her invaluable help and her input.

Victoria pulled up outside the house. It looked so innocuous from out here. Malcolm couldn’t even begin to try and explain to Victoria the chaos contained in those walls. She had not been here overnight since their return from the Scottish Highlands, and had only had the children for one night herself – she had quickly buckled to Nicola’s almost hysterical demands that her children stay in their own beds every night, after Ella had completely disintegrated in Victoria’s spare bedroom and had to be taken home at two in the morning.

When the engine cut out, Malcolm could distantly hear Ella’s shrieks, though they were muffled by the house’s walls. “Who’s doing the screaming?” asked Victoria, but Malcolm was sure she had a fair idea already.

“Ella.”

“Dear Lord. How often does that happen?”

“Every night.” Malcolm got out of the car and said, “Thanks for the lift home, Victoria.” But she was already closing the driver’s side door behind her. “Ah, no,” Malcolm said. “You don’t want to do that. Fucking carnage in there.”

“I can help,” Victoria argued. “I can help with Ben and Sophie, even if I can’t do anything about Ella or Nicola.”

Malcolm shook his head but didn’t try and stop her from following him into the house; he knew her well enough to know it would be useless, not to mention a waste of what little energy he had. Once over the threshold, he heard Ella’s shouts from the floor above. Sophie was standing silently at the top of the stairs, her face expressionless as she watched her big sister having a meltdown. Though it was buried beneath the noise coming out of Ella, Ben’s voice could be heard. Malcolm distinctly caught the phrase ‘stupid cow’, and made a mental note to tell his son he never wanted to hear him call his sisters or his mother that again.

He took the stairs two at a time, gently put his hands on Sophie’s arms and said to her, “Go downstairs and see your granny, Sophie, love.”

Sophie didn’t speak. She didn’t even react. She simply obeyed, and walked calmly down the stairs to her grandmother. Ben was in Ella’s room, covering his ears and shouting at Ella to shut up, calling her for every name under the sun. Malcolm didn’t even try to talk to Ben – he had learned that was a pointless exercise in these situations. Instead, he tapped Ben’s shoulder and let him turn, then lifted the child into his arms and took him downstairs. He took his hands from his ears and stopped shouting when removed from the sound of his sister’s shrieks. Malcolm took a moment to say to Ben, whom he had just placed onto the sofa, “ _Never_ let me hear you call your mum or your sisters a stupid cow ever again. Do you understand?”

Albeit with a scowl and his arms folded across his chest, Ben nodded. Victoria was pale. She had never known that this was the nightly routine for this family. It wasn’t often that Victoria let her shock be known on her face (she’d been a consultant in emergency medicine and had seen her fair share of human destruction and trauma on her ward) but right now, it couldn’t be more obvious. “Can you stay down here with Ben and Sophie?” Malcolm asked her. He needed to give her the option to run, but knew she would never take it.

“Of course,” she said.

Malcolm ran up the stairs to Ella’s bedroom. She was standing at the foot of her bed, crying violently, and every so often she shrieked at something neither of her parents could see. Nicola was trying to restrain her, but Ella fought wildly to take her wrists from her mother’s grasp. “Malcolm, don’t just stand there like a spare dick at an orgy – help me!” Nicola shouted at him impatiently, looking backwards over her shoulder. She was losing her strength, having been struggling to keep Ella in her bedroom for at least twenty minutes now. Her eyes, Malcolm noticed, were dull, with black marks underneath.

He stepped forwards and softly took Ella’s face into his hands while she screamed. “Ella, look at me,” he ordered her. He didn’t raise his voice; it only frightened her more, but Nicola always seemed to forget that when she lost control of Ella. “At my face. _My_ face. Who am I?” The fear in her eyes was unmistakable, and that she was in limbo somewhere between reality and nightmare was painted in the terror on her face. “Who am I?”

“Malcolm,” she said hoarsely. She was still sobbing, but she was focusing on something, someone, that really was in the room with her. “Dad. You’re Dad.”

“Good,” he encouraged her. “And who’s that?” he asked her, inclining his head towards Nicola.

Ella’s eyes fell onto Nicola, and she searched the woman she had seen every day for fourteen years like she was a stranger. Malcolm believed that when Ella lost herself in that night, she really did fail to recognise her mother. It took a few seconds, but she eventually answered, “Mum. Mum. It’s Mum.”

Malcolm stroked Ella’s hair with some urgency and got onto his knees in front of her, so he was just slightly shorter than her. “You’re in your room,” he told her. “We’re at home, in London. Nobody’s coming to hurt you. Everybody’s safe. You’ve done nothing wrong; you’re not in trouble. We just need you to calm down, alright?”

Exhausted, Ella’s breath left her body and she fell forwards, caught by her parents; he rubbed her back, trying to soothe her fright and guilt. Over Ella’s shoulder, he looked up at Nicola. Her eyes burned through him, and he knew she was trying to work out yet again what it was Malcolm understood about Ella’s condition that she did not. If he’d not been sworn to secrecy, he would have told her but just as Victoria _always_ refused to tell Nicola’s secrets for her, he would not betray Ella’s.

He was still absolutely furious with her for her assertion he was not Ella’s dad in her bid to seize control, but the look on her face as she watched her daughter in such pain forced a little compassion from him. Nicola was at the end of her tether, and he knew she was trying her hardest to hold her family together on her own; it just so happened that she was too tired, too broken, herself to manage it. She refused his help at every turn until it ended up like this. Until her stubborn attempts to be everything failed and all the cracks showed. Only when there was nowhere else to turn would she turn to her husband, and Malcolm couldn’t for the life of him understand why she was doing it to herself.

It was doing nothing but harm – to herself, to her marriage, to her children. It was unsustainable. Malcolm wasn’t actually certain how she had kept it up for three months without major catastrophe.

“Go downstairs and your granny’ll get you a glass of water,” he said quietly into Ella’s ear. She nodded into his neck, and silently left the room for the staircase.

Malcolm drew himself back up to his full height, and looked down into his wife’s face. She was close to tears but fighting it back, though he could not say for the sake of what. And even though he had not nearly forgiven her, he could not look into those wide, beautiful eyes and honestly say that he wouldn’t forgive her. Of course he would forgive her, in the end, when he got over the hurt and anger she had inflicted on him. He couldn’t let it destroy them – after all, who else could possibly understand them, if not one another? So he pressed a kiss to her temple and took her into his arms. Her fingers clutched at his shirt; it was indicative of her desperation, but also her relief that her husband had come back when she needed him. Had she expected him not to come home?

It was one of those few moments that Malcolm really felt the impact of the fact that the chain ended with him. He comforted his wife, but there was nobody to help him. If he hadn’t alienated her, perhaps he could have turned to his grown-up daughter, but he had enough sense not to ask Bella for help after infuriating her like he had done this afternoon.

It was nearing midnight when they settled Ben and Sophie back into bed. Malcolm sat with Ella on the sofa, holding her until she fell asleep, and Victoria watched quietly as Nicola watched her husband and her daughter so closely bonded. He knew what Victoria would garner from her observations: that Nicola felt excluded, that she was not completely in control of herself, and that she was almost jealous that Malcolm could get through to Ella during her meltdowns where she could not.

When Victoria finally spoke, it wasn’t with anger or frustration, or even with impatience. It was with candour and kindness. “This can’t go on,” she said quietly, careful not to wake Ella. “The kids need help. Nicola, _you_ need help more than anyone. You can’t possibly expect to be the one in control of everything. You don’t _need_ to be all over everything all the time; that’s what you’ve got a husband for.”

Nicola looked at her hands, turning her rings around her finger. It was something she didn’t want to hear; Malcolm knew she wanted to keep trying to save everybody. But her mother was right. If she didn’t stop it, she was going to beyond saving herself, and she could not possibly hope to save anyone else if she wasn’t functional. The problem was that, in all the anger, shame, frustration, and desperation Malcolm saw in Nicola, she was lost in herself, and could not approach these issues with any rationality.

“And you, Malcolm, you’ve got to stop getting so fucking angry,” Victoria said. “When you get angry, Nicola gets anxious, and the kids tap into that. On top of everything else, they don’t need to be channelling their mum and dad’s bullshit as well.”

Malcolm gave a curt nod. She wasn’t saying anything that, intellectually, he didn’t know. Anyone with a brain stem knew the atmosphere in this house worsened when he let his anger run way with him and Nicola let herself get anxious. But when it all fell apart in their hands, neither one of them were able to see it intellectually; all they saw was everything slipping through their fingers.

“The pair of you need to stop being cruel to each other,” she continued. “Cruelty doesn’t help anyone. All it does is generate more cruelty, and before you know what you’ve done, you’ve destroyed the person you love the most. Cruelty breeds pain, and addiction, and bullying, and abuse, and domestic violence, and hatred…I don’t want to see you go down that road, either of you. I’ve seen it too many times – couples who lost themselves in the trauma and were fucking _cruel_ to one another. Don’t do that. Please, just don’t do that to each other, or yourselves.”

It was this capacity of Victoria’s to tell the most uncomfortable of truths that both made Malcolm’s insides squirm and his heart cry out his thanks for her presence in his life. Victoria didn’t care what they wanted to hear; it was what they needed to hear that interested her most. It always did.

Ella stirred in Malcolm’s arms, and he decided it was time to put her to bed. He would have to stay with her all night, because if she woke up alone in the dark, she would only lose her grip again. Malcolm scooped her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs, leaving her only to get changed, washed and brush his teeth; while he did that, he made sure to leave her lamp on.

He lay down on the bed next to her, kissed her head and switched the lamp off. Plunged in darkness, he could not stop the images of the dark, cold water from which he pulled his wife flashing through his mind. He saw the caman swing through the air, and the stock of a shotgun knock his son to the ground. The phantom of the agony in his leg returned to him, as it did every night, despite the fact he barely even limped anymore. The blasts of guns echoed in his mind, so he put his arm around his daughter to tether himself to reality.

For the first time in his life, Malcolm Tucker was scared of the dark. Or rather, he was scared of where the darkness took him.


	3. Morning of Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another big thanks to Tereshkova for her help here!

The next morning was a nightmare. Operating on almost no sleep and a huge amount of stress, with Nicola and Victoria’s words bouncing around his mind, he was mainlining caffeine just to keep functioning without throttling half the Cabinet and their civil servants. The Prime Minister had made so very fucking stupid comments about the current state of the Department for Work and Pensions, and Ben Swain had managed to look like a fucking winking Teletubby during the _Question Time_ programme last night.

The Foreign Secretary had been caught sharing rather fucking offensive opinions of other Commonwealth nations, which the Canadian, Australian, South African, Malaysian and Singaporean medias were having their own little separate fucking parties with. That was a fire Malcolm knew he’d still be putting out into next fucking week. He’d been making international phone calls half the morning, and was still to visit the Foreign Office where, he hoped, the Foreign Secretary was cowering under a desk awaiting the unannounced arrival of his very fucking gruesome demise.

The Scottish Office was in uproar over the opposition’s attack on their cooperation with the Scottish Government, though that could be seen as a positive thing to most people with more than half a dozen brain cells – it meant the opposition was panicking at the fact that Holyrood and Westminster were not at each other’s throats and they were doing something positive; the opposition was well aware they were all too far removed from Scottish values to be able to do the same if they were in power, and it worried them. It wasn’t a cock-up at all. It was an achievement, but as with all attacks, the department had reacted defensively.

DoSAC had managed to lose the details of thousands of EU nationals currently on licence in England and Wales – which, of course, freaked Nicola out completely – so he had spent a good hour calming her down and getting an IT guy in to find the files. It turned out Glenn had saved it to the wrong part of the fucking server. Malcolm had been hard pressed not to dangle the witless cunt out the window by the fucking balls.

By the time they’d found the files and Malcolm returned to the relative safety of his office at Number Ten, he was tense, jumpy and exhausted. He startled when his office door flew open and a short, stocky figure strode into the room.

Bella Whyte handed Malcolm a white envelope, addressed to the Prime Minister. He took it, taking in the neat, almost copperplate penmanship he’d come to know of his eldest daughter. “What’s this?” he asked.

“My resignation letter.” Malcolm’s head shot upwards. Bella stood on the other side of his desk, her expression resolute. “I’ve convinced Euan to go back to Portree. I’ll still be an MP but-”

“What I said yesterday,” Malcolm quickly butted in, “I didn’t mean it. I could _never_ mean that. I wasn’t telling you to go home and I definitely wasn’t mocking your ethnicity.”

Bella pressed her fingers into her temples. “Dad, it’s too much. Ever since the whole fucking thing with James, you’ve been horrible. I’m used to the bollockings and shouting matches when I fuck up, but you’re doing it for no reason these days. And the things you _say_ to me, Dad! You’re crossing lines you don’t go anywhere near with anybody else, and it hurts. You went too fucking far. D’you know what I did last night?”

Malcolm set the letter down in front of him, pushing back the very dangerous emotional response to Bella’s course of action. “What did you do?” he asked, sure to keep the feeling out of his voice. He could not let her see that he needed her to stay.

“I went home, and I gret. And I gret, and gret, for hours. Euan and Aoife had to treat me like one of the kinchins, I was that upset. I don’t know whether finding my dad was a blessing or a curse anymore.”

He didn’t know what to do with this information. Bella was not one to start crying. And for Bella to say that perhaps finding him was a curse, that hurt as much as Nicola saying he was nothing to Ella.

For Bella to cry for hours, she must have felt that her world made no sense; Malcolm knew enough about her now to understand she had a mad world, but she coped fine when she could make sense of it. Indeed, Bella’s multicultural world – Traveller traditions, English home, Irish au pair, Scottish politics – made sense to very few people, but it worked for Bella. It must have been derailed and, deep down, Malcolm knew he was the one who had caused the train wreck.

But he couldn’t tell her that.

“If you resign, this government falls,” he reminded her; he was reverting to the old political argument, for it was a solid one. “You’re the only thing standing between us and the end of government, and you know it, Bella. The other two options for your job are cunts, and we _cannot_ put a fucking English MP in there. Not with the state the union’s in just now. The SNP would fucking _destroy_ us. I will not allow you to fucking kill this government because Daddy hurt your feelings!”

Bella leaned over the desk and bared her teeth at him. “And what about me, Dad?” she snarled. “Hmm? You want me to fall but pretend to stand, just to save your precious fucking party?”

“No, but-”

“I know you’re traumatised,” Bella continued, “and you’re throwing yourself into this place, but the things you’ve said to me these past couple months were fucking unforgivable. I _cannot_ be a good politician, a good mother and a good daughter if you keep saying things like ‘fuck off back to your gypsy camp!’”

“I am _not_ fucking traumatised,” Malcolm retorted.

“You were shot!” Bella shouted in his face. “Your wife nearly drowned! Your stepson got his skull fractured! If you’re not traumatised, I’m the Queen’s fucking granny!”

“I am fucking fine,” he snapped at her.

Bella laughed bitterly, still mere inches from his face. “Dad, you jump fucking sky high when the kinchins bang their toys off the floor!”

Malcolm got to his feet and stalked around his desk and out of his office. He took Bella’s letter with him. This was not happening. He was not having this conversation, not least with his own daughter, and Bella was not resigning. He would not allow her to topple this government. “Dad!” he heard her shout down the hallway at him. “Dad, stop! Just _stop_!” she bellowed.

Everyone in the corridor stopped, Malcolm included; all eyes were on him, and it was the very last thing he needed. There were rumours about him since he returned to work on crutches. As the physical evidence that he had been shot started to fade into a slight and barely visible limp, rumours of a mental scar had started to circulate, and they always got back to him. He didn’t need to be reminded that everyone in this fucking tiny terraced hellhole reckoned he was less than stable. Of course, they never had seen him as stable because he never actually was, but the comments that got back to him often contained the terms ‘shell shock’ and ‘post-traumatic stress’, neither of which were problems he had encountered.

“Nash here tae the jeeger afore I walt ye!” Bella shouted.

It was the first time Malcolm had heard Bella shout cant in Downing Street. He had always anticipated that she would only ever do that in anger, but no. She had done it in desperation. And that exposure of her own closely guarded language was the only reason he obeyed. The threat of a slap was unnecessary. He did as she said, and returned to his office door. She yanked him inside and slammed the door behind them.

“You are _not_ resigning.”

“I am.”

“No.”

“What do you want me to do, Dad?” she asked. She was no longer shouting, but in the quiet growl of her voice, her anger at him was unmistakable. “You’re making me miserable. Not the job. Not London. Not the politics. Not the press. _You_.”

Malcolm leaned back against the wall and glared down at Bella. The problem with that woman was that she could not be intimidated. Whatever Malcolm did, even if he made borderline racist remarks about her, shouted in her face, underhandedly subverted her plans, he did not scare her. He didn’t have the same effect upon Bella as he did upon most people, and therefore struggled to hide from her. People who weren’t scared of him persisted, and he didn’t want her to persist. He wanted her to stay in her job and leave everything else alone.

She didn’t know the extent of the hurricane of insanity that swirled endlessly in his house, or the battle for control in which he and Nicola were constantly engaged. And he didn’t want her to know. It wasn’t her problem to solve.

Bella stood in front of him and seized the lapels of his jacket. “I miss my dad. Eilidh and Alasdair miss their grandad. Euan misses his peevin’ pal. Even fucking Aoife misses having you around!”

Malcolm wanted to tell her he was still here. That Malcolm Tucker had, unlike Elvis, not left the fucking building. But the words didn’t come out, and Malcolm flirted with the notion that his mouth could not form such a monumental lie. Even if he didn’t want to admit it, he had to credit Bella with the observation that he was more stressed and therefore more vicious than usual.

“I’ll put it off for a month. _A month_ ,” she said firmly. “But you’ve got to take a fucking long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself why the fuck your daughter should take your shit every day!” Malcolm noticed her eyes burning bluer than Marge Simpson’s hair, as they did when she was full of any kind of emotion. “But if you don’t stop this, I _will_ go back to Skye.”

By ‘this’, Malcolm had to assume she was referring to his vile temper and abhorrent remarks towards her. The issue was that they were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He didn’t so much say these things as he listened to them being said. “You’re being ridiculous, Bella,” he replied. He simply could not bow down to her. He could not let her think she was right about him. “So I cracked a few shitty jokes. I do that to everybody!”

“Maybe, but you’ve never resorted to fucking racism!” Bella said. Her voice was rising again, ringing in his ears like a kirk bell. “I know you’ve got an evil sense of humour, and you don’t hold back when you’re expressing an opinion – I appear to have fucking inherited that, for my fucking sins! But this is _not_ that. You’re not _you_ , Dad. You’re just hurting me for no reason – it doesn’t achieve any sort of obedience and it’s not to make me do my job! You’re ten times more vicious towards me than you are with any other fucking Cabinet minister. It’s just you chucking all your shit feelings at me and expecting me to fucking take it because I’m your bairn!”

He did not want to hear another word of his daughter’s opinions of him. Even if she was right, he had nothing he could do about it. So he tried to barge past her, but she pushed him back against the wall.

“Are you still taking your tablets?” she asked him.

“No,” he admitted. The medication he had been put on at New Year clouded his vision, and he needed his wits about him if he was to keep any kind of lid on the pressure cooker that was his home _and_ stop this government from sinking into a black hole of its own fucking creation.

“Are you still seeing the counsellor?”

“No,” he snapped. He had stopped going simply because he didn’t have the time to go when he was needed elsewhere, whether it was the party or his family shouting for him.

Bella huffed out a frustrated breath. “I knew it. I fucking knew it.” Her gaze was incisive, cutting through him like a thousand razor blades. “After everything you’ve been through, don’t you reckon you need _some_ kind of help with it?”

Malcolm grasped Bella’s arms and moved her out of his path. “I am _fine_ ,” he told her. He didn’t spare her a backwards glance as he left her in his office. He had the Foreign Office to visit, and three separate stories still to kill in the overseas and domestic press. There was no time for reflection on what Bella had said. He had too much to do in one afternoon, and the prospect of going home to what increasingly resembled Sunnyside Asylum was fucking enough to think about.


	4. Fix It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's one fucked up day but I'm about to head out to my grandparents' in a moment, after my landlady decided to ignore my request that she come over before 12pm. My aunt Mariah died on Saturday, so I would much rather be with them right now and...uggggghhhhh. Anyway. I digress. I'll shut up now.

Once upon a time, Malcolm would have been relieved to hear silence when he opened the front door of his house – especially after the kind of day he’d just had. But now, the quiet frightened Malcolm as much as the screams did. It was relief above all else that flooded over him when he walked into the living room to find the three children concentrating hard on their homework. “Where’s Mum?” he asked them.

“In the kitchen,” answered Ben. He ruffled the boy’s hair on the way back out of the room.

When he got to the kitchen, Nicola was chopping vegetables. Malcolm, without a word, picked up a knife and a potato, and helped her. It was the closest they’d been in weeks, this one hushed moment of domestic normality. They weren’t fighting, or shouting, or wrestling their daughter, or telling their son off…and Malcolm was finding it easier to forgive Nicola’s cruel words now. He knew her, and therefore knew her behaviour was a desperate struggle for control. She hadn’t meant it, or she wouldn’t have called him back to calm Ella down.

“Did you get hold of the Foreign Secretary?” Nicola asked quietly. She didn’t take her eyes off the task at hand.

“Oh, yes,” Malcolm said, barely suppressing a chuckle. “He’s currently drafting five very fucking humiliating apologies. If he can insult each country so specifically, he can give them specific fucking apologies.”

“Remind me again why we have a racist twat as Foreign Secretary?”

“Tom’s been mates with him since we were occupied by the fucking Romans,” Malcolm grumbled. “Christ, if it was up to me, he’d be out on his fucking arse.”

“And who’s going to be Scottish Secretary?” Nicola asked casually. Malcolm should have known Bella would tell Nicola about her plan to resign.

Malcolm paused his chopping for the briefest of moments before continuing with the defiant reply, “Bella Whyte.”

Nicola set her knife down. “Malcolm,” she began wearily, “she’s resigned.”

“No, she’s not,” he said, putting his own knife down onto the chopping board. “She’s giving it another month.”

“And do you think you can get a grip on yourself in the next month?”

Her tone was not accusatory, or derisive, but gentle. Had the thought of her stepdaughter returning to the opposite end of the country given Nicola back her sense of compassion and love for him? “I’ll just have to keep out her fucking way, won’t I?” Malcolm replied, already tired of thinking about it.

“I’m not sure that-”

“It’s the fucking best I can do,” he snapped. “Her problem right now is I’m being too fucking hard on her. I can’t do that if I don’t see her.”

“You’re going to avoid your own daughter?”

“If it means we get to keep a halfway fucking competent, forward-thinking Scottish Secretary, then aye, I will avoid her.”

“Jesus, Malcolm,” Nicola sighed. Her forehead fell against his chest; she was exhausted. Malcolm realised now that this was the reason behind her gentleness tonight. She had gone beyond the normal realms of exhaustion and all the anger, frustration, anxiety and impatience she experienced there, into this state where she couldn’t even react to those things which she could not condone.

This crack in her defences was almost welcome to Malcolm. Not because it betrayed how low and weak she was feeling, but because he could be sure his wife was human again, and not the raging monster she’d recently been. He had never known her so outwardly angry, or so willing to wound. That person who fought him so viciously wasn’t Nicola. It was some reflection of her, with all her worst traits exaggerated and her ability for peace hampered.

“How did we get here?” she mumbled into his chest.

Malcolm didn’t answer her question, simply because he did not really know the answer. It had been a blur. In the first couple of weeks, they had coped. But as the weeks turned into months, and their energy started to wane, it became harder with every passing day, until they were scraping by with only the goal of refraining from tearing one another limb from limb left to them.

Nicola pulled him down and kissed him; Malcolm stumbled upon the realisation that he couldn’t recall the last time he had kissed his wife. Any companionship, any intimacy, any affection, between them had all but disappeared as they had slowly drowned under the weight of their lives, their children and their minds. They, he now saw, had neglected one another. Their kisses quickly became harsh, desperate, and soon Nicola was kissing him as she had that awful morning he had discovered her plans to run to Edinburgh without him. It was the warning sign. It was always the warning sign, this way she threw herself into these moments. It was how she both let him in and shut him out, and somehow, she managed to do both simultaneously.

He gently pushed her off to see her face; as he had feared, it was impassive and guarded.

And for the first time in weeks, he found it in himself to tell her, “I love you.”

Nothing. Nothing lifted or brightened. But she did say, “I love you, Malcolm. Don’t forget it.”

Malcolm reached up and stroked her hair away from her face, resting his palm on her cheek. For just a moment, he’d had his wife back. She was still in there, somewhere.

The rest of the night, they pretended they were normal. With the kids’ homework done and the water’s surface calm, they ventured into the dangerous territory of playing a board game. Malcolm was wary – with Ben so foul-tempered, Sophie so submissive and Ella so anxious, there were a million ways that could have gone wrong. But it didn’t. There was no fighting, no accusations of cheating, no loss of temper. Just a game. Ella even cracked a smile.

By the time bedtime came around, they went through the normal routine every family did at roughly the same time, but with the certainty that their teenager would not sleep through the night. Malcolm had considered Victoria’s suggestion, but had been forced to decide that the knowledge Malcolm’s father had committed suicide might be more harmful than helpful. Most of all, he did not want to give her any ideas. He had already caught her with a bottle in her hand when she found out her mother was ill; if he told her about his father and it prompted her to try and take her own life, he would never forgive himself, and he knew Victoria would hate herself for recommending it.

Lying in bed next to Nicola, he kept the lamp on as long as he could. The light kept him calm, even knowing what he would see and hear when the darkness descended once more. But he could not keep Nicola awake to retain his own comfort, and did eventually turn it off. The only source of light was the summer twilight through the curtains, the one thing that saved him from a pitch-black room.

Sleep did not come. Plenty of other things came – memory and fear the biggest culprits – but never sleep. He dozed, but never succumbed to the vulnerability of sleep. Malcolm could not have said what time it was when a loud thump sounded outside. He sat bolt upright and went straight to the window, only to find their neighbour across the street heading away from their car. They must have slammed the boot door down.

But that rational, logical answer did nothing to slow Malcolm’s heart.

“Malcolm,” Nicola said sleepily. “Come back to bed. It’s nothing.”

And she was completely correct. Their neighbour had every right to open and shut his car doors as he saw fit. The world could not stop because he was being daft.

So Malcolm got back into bed, and lay with his back to Nicola. He felt her arm fall over his body and her hand grasp his tightly. She had never done that, or at least not since they came home from Scotland. Of course, he had rarely let her see it, but on the few occasions he had not been able to fight back his reactions to the world, Nicola had kept her distance. He didn’t know why. It was not like her; she used to be almost infuriatingly persistent when she felt something was amiss. But recently, she had backed off from him. But whatever her reasons, she was not distant at the moment.

“It’s okay if you’re not okay,” she said. He could feel her chin against his shoulder, and she drew herself closer to him.

He couldn’t reply to that at all. For several minutes, they lay in silence, Malcolm listening to the goings on outside the house – the cars on the road, the closing of doors, the occasional passing conversation. He was so awake to the world that he could not even entertain the idea that he might sleep, even safe in his wife’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” Nicola whispered. “For what I said last night. I’m sorry. I know you’re Ella’s dad. She _chose_ you, which is more than she ever fucking made of James.” She squeezed his hand and kissed his jaw. “You know her better than I do, and it gets to me sometimes. I’m supposed to be her mum and I can’t get through to her. And then you step in and calm her down, after I’ve spent half an hour trying to just fucking keep her in one place. You make it look easy. You make it look simple, and it drives me fucking mad sometimes.”

“It’s not easy,” Malcolm replied. “And I can’t help it if she turns to me, Nic’la. Would you rather I fucking snubbed her?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, it’s not that. I just don’t understand why she won’t let me in. Why she never settles for me.”

“It’s just the way things turned out,” he lied. He couldn’t tell Nicola that it was all because Malcolm knew Ella blamed herself, or that she had seen James shot in the face, but at this stage, he wished he could. To be able to confide in his wife would have made this tolerable. “Just how it worked out.” He turned over and faced Nicola, taking in her features through the little light coming through the curtains. She was completely drained. “Are you alright?” he asked her.

Nicola nodded her head and pressed her lips to his. “I’m fine.”

“Nic’la…”

“I’m fine, Malcolm.”

“I know you’re not,” he reminded her. “I know you’re not fucking okay.”

Her arm tightened around his body, telling him he had hit a nerve. “I have to be okay,” she said.

“Did you listen to a fucking word your mum said?” Nicola’s forehead rested against Malcolm’s, the barricade around her slowly crumbling. “You’re not supposed to drive the rest of us fucking mental trying to control everything. You’re supposed to let me take the strain with you.”

“I have to fix it,” she murmured. “I can’t live with myself if I don’t fix this.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got to fix what I broke.”

Malcolm drew back to search her face. That was not the answer he had expected to hear. “You didn’t fucking break anything, love.”

“I didn’t tell you he was getting out of prison,” Nicola said. “I let him get the better of me so many times that I didn’t see I should’ve told you the truth. God, I was the one who married him, had kids with him, let him batter me, let him kill my daughter-”

“You didn’t _let_ him do anything. You couldn’t control him. Nobody could fucking control him!” Malcolm growled at her. How could he have missed this? She blamed herself for all of it. “Everything that happened was down to James and that cunt Armitage. You can’t put that on yourself, Nicola, or it’ll drive you fucking mad.”

“That’s not the point. I-”

But whatever the point was, Malcolm didn’t get to hear it. A shout came from Ella’s room, piercing the relative peace of a house at night. “I’ll go,” he sighed. He kissed Nicola’s forehead and told her, “You try and get some sleep.”

Malcolm got out of bed and went to Ella’s bedroom, turning the light on to see her breathing heavily, her eyes darting around the room. “Dad,” she said breathlessly. “Dad, I killed him.”

“No, Ella, you didn’t. You haven’t killed anybody.” He had lost count of how many times he’d told Ella this, but she never did believe him. “Come on,” he sighed, lying down beside her. “Time to get some sleep. I’m right here.” Ella curled up into a ball and leaned into Malcolm’s chest, crying without any explanation. She didn’t need to justify it to Malcolm, for he demanded no excuse or explanation; he simply held her until she cried herself asleep.


	5. Trawlermen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life update: I haven't slept in nearly two days, I have a dreaded appointment in little over an hour, and my brother's got a puppy. A springer/cocker cross. I fear if he ever wants peace again, he's fucked. But the dog's cute - and so tiny I was terrified of breaking him. Fun times.

Malcolm did avoid Bella at work, as much as his job allowed. Where he could, he sent others to deal with her, until he realised a week had passed since Bella’s threat of resignation, and the first time he had seen her at all was when she passed him coming out of the Cabinet meeting. She was deep in conversation with Nicola, and telling some story about Alasdair jumping off a chair like Superman, only to smack his face off the floor. He hoped they hadn’t seen them, but Nicola reached out for his hand and squeezed gently. It stopped him in his tracks.

“Bella’s going to come to ours for dinner tonight,” Nicola smiled up at him. Anyone else would have argued but Malcolm knew his wife, and understood it was not a request, a debate or an offer – she was simply telling him what she had already decided.

He looked at Bella. She seemed less than thrilled, and he was sure Nicola had not given her much say in the matter, either. Or maybe she was still angry with him, or upset that he had neglected even to call her, never mind enter any room she occupied. He was doing his best to lay off her, and this was the only way he knew how. He could not hurt her if he never saw her. Having her here, even if they barely interacted, was better than her vanishing back to Skye, mere months after he had realised just who she was to him.

“Aye, fine,” he muttered. He walked away, but Nicola followed. He tried to outwalk her, but she caught him by the belt to stop him, guiding them both into his office. “Oi!” he exclaimed.

“I’m your wife,” she snapped. “I’m allowed to do that.” She was angry, but Malcolm could not understand why. “What the fucking hell was that?!”

“What?” he sighed. He wasn’t able for this today. Not after staying up with Ella half the night.

“‘Aye, fine,’” she mocked his low, gruff response to the news of their dinner guests. “She’s your daughter, Malcolm – you could at least _try_ to sound enthusiastic!”

“I’ve not got time for this,” he replied. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips; no matter his frustration with her, he could not let her think she was to blame, after learning there was so much else for which she shouldered the blame. “I’ll see you when I get home, unless DoSAC fucks up first.”

But Nicola wasn’t fucking having it. She had that shine in her eyes that Malcolm dreaded – he wasn’t getting off the hook at all, never mind easily. “ _Make_ time for it,” she hissed. “What is your bloody problem?”

That was a question Malcolm could not answer. He didn’t even really know the answer. All he knew was he didn’t want to hurt Bella, and he definitely didn’t want to lose the Scottish Secretary, and the only way to keep her happy was to keep back from her. “I…” Malcolm began, but nothing came of it. “I’ve got to go.”

Concern overrode everything else that had been swimming in Nicola’s wide eyes; something about what she saw in him worried her, but he could not know what it was, so there was no way to hide it. The one thing Nicola did not need was another thing to fret over, so Malcolm played her at the game she believed she had mastered. He leaned in and kissed her feverishly, his hand keeping her close as he distracted her from whatever it was she could not make peace with. “Malcolm,” Nicola mumbled between kisses. “Malcolm, what are you doing?”

Her fingers found their way between her face and his, and her thumb stroked his lip. “Am I not fucking allowed to kiss my wife now?” he protested hotly.

“Of course you can,” she said, “but you’re…you’re not okay, Malcolm. And I’m worried. I’m worried you’re using everything else – work, the kids, me – to distract yourself. And when you eventually stop and look around you, it’ll hit you so hard it might kill you.”

“And you don’t think you’re doing fucking exactly that yourself?!” Malcolm retorted.

“I’m fine,” Nicola brushed away his remark. “Stop changing the subject. You haven’t talked about _anything_.”

“I don’t need to talk about anything!” Malcolm argued. “And again, do the words ‘pot,’ kettle,’ and ‘black’ mean anything at all to you, or has the irony gone completely over your fucking empty head?!” The instinct for viciousness awoke in him yet again, to try and keep her away from anything upon which she might find a comment to pass. “Jesus Christ, Nic’la! You really are a fucking idiot. Sort your own fucking mental head out before you go poking around in mine!”

Nicola looked hurt, and guilt flooded over Malcolm. But determination paved over the hurt – that was never a fucking good sign. “Do you know, two years ago, I might’ve fallen for that?”

Malcolm realised with a huge amount of discomfort that they had reached a point where, for better or for worse, he could not lie to Nicola and expect to be believed. She knew him too well. That was the end goal of marriage for most people, he supposed, but even though he did love and trust Nicola, the fact his lies were no longer convincing to her unnerved him. There had been moments in the past when she had been able to see right through it all, but never as frequently and consistently as she did now. And when she calmed down and stopped flailing about hysterically, she was able to analyse what she saw in him. It almost made Malcolm wish she would revert back to her single-minded war for control over every part of their lives. At least then she didn’t stop and read into the things she found, even if she was a fucking nightmare to live with.

Nicola’s hand stroked his head; she was doing as her mother said: choosing kindness over cruelty. “I won’t be deceived by it anymore, Malcolm.”

He noticed now that her eyes had hardened as her face softened, that bizarre way it did when she was being stern to be kind. She was a woman made up entirely of contradictions, but hadn’t he known that since the night after Katie’s death? Frightened but fierce. Inept but determined. Shaken but strong. He’d known that from the start she was everything all at once. Hadn’t that, after all, been the very first thing with which he had fallen in love?

“Let’s just get through this fucking dinner, okay?” he sighed. He could not make any promises beyond that. He couldn’t even really promise to get through that without something going wrong.

Nicola rested a hand on his chest and kissed him gently. It seemed to be enough. For now, at least.

* * *

 

Dinnertime came far too quickly. Before he could stop to think about it, Bella, Euan, Aoife, Eilidh and Alasdair were sitting with them around the table, as loud and as bubbly as they always were. Euan was telling his stories – this one was about how his father had moved them into a flat in the nineties, when Euan was a teenager, and let a friend fix up the floorboards, only to have the police tear them up six months later and find eighteen thousand pounds hidden there. “Probably the first time Da ever telt the hornies the truth,” he grinned. “‘Wisnae me!’ he wis roarin’ aboot the place. Turnt oot the hornies kent that an’ just wanted tae see him right for thirty-odd years’ torment.”

Bella and Nicola were talking animatedly, sitting next to one another as they had taken to doing since New Year. Aoife was listening to Euan with great interest – the less than lawful behaviour of the previous generations of her host family amused her to no end, though Malcolm hoped to Christ none of it ever reached the ears of a journalist.

The children were all cheerful, even Ella; Sophie still didn’t speak, but she was laughing at appropriate moments, and that was all Malcolm could really hope for just now. Ben was almost the boy he had been six months ago, his temper only tested with Alasdair’s refusal to eat his peas; calling Alasdair a ‘stupid crybaby’ got him swiftly reprimanded by both Malcolm and Nicola.

Malcolm was an outsider, looking in at his own family.

He had managed to go the entire meal without so much as asking Bella to pass the salt. It was an impediment he hadn’t suffered for a long time, to be paranoid about speaking to Bella. It was more than just worrying he would upset her. She, like Nicola, had convinced herself there was something wrong, and the more he interacted with her, the more evidence he gave her to misread. That put him in a position of vulnerability, at the mercy of Bella’s interpretations.

They eventually retired to the living room like a normal family, not a dysfunctional mess that had been imploding in waves of sorrow and rage. Bella took the decision to sit right next to Malcolm; he fought the instinct to stand up and walk away from her. “How’re you, Dad?” she asked him. She talked like they had not fought, and he had not avoided her like the fucking bubonic plague all week.

“Fine,” he muttered. “How’s things with you?”

“Ah, the usual,” she smiled. “Eilidh’s decided she’s gonnae be a trawlerwoman.” At that, Malcolm had to chuckle. “Changes every week, usually, but she seems fucking hell bent on this one. Oh, aye, she’s all for it. Drew herself a wee boat and everything.”

“What the fuck put that idea in her head?” Malcolm asked through his repressed laughter.

“Sitting up with Daddy watching reruns of _Trawlermen_ ,” Bella answered darkly. “Thon cowie’s got a lot to fucking answer for.”

Malcolm couldn’t help it. The idea that his little granddaughter had seafaring ambitions on fishing trawlers cracked the darkness that had been cemented around him. There was nothing else to do but laugh. For all the size of her, she’d probably grow up to match her mother’s height of five feet, and wouldn’t be able to reach the middle shelf of the kitchen cupboard without help, let alone the bunks in a trawler. “Sorry,” he laughed, “but that’s fucking hilarious.”

Bella stared at him for a second, eyeing him like he’d lost his last ounce of fucking sanity, but then started to laugh herself. She fell in towards him, her head on his shoulder as they fell into a fit of giggles, all precipitated by the fact Eilidh would very much like to work on a trawler. The only thing Malcolm could think of that might have attracted her to it was the opportunities for independence and authority. “I could see her as a skipper, mind,” Malcolm said between laughs. “She likes to be in charge.”

“I pity the poor crew,” sniggered Bella. Her face straightened, and she said seriously, “I probably shouldn’t say shite like that about my own bairn, should I?”

“Nah. I mean, would you work under her?”

“Not for all the tea in China,” snorted Bella. “She’s too much like me.”

Malcolm grinned. This was passing amicably, even if he had spent most of the evening sitting with a poker up his arse up until that point. Though not remotely relaxed or at ease, he was somewhat reassured that, if nothing else, his daughter was at least on speaking terms with him.

The worries assuaged about Bella, however, were soon replaced by anxieties caused by alone time with Nicola. Today, she had her wits about her, and she saw _everything_. There was no hiding from her when they were left alone in the living room after sending the children off to bed. For reasons Malcolm could not fathom, she persisted. “You know I meant what I said before, don’t you?” she asked quietly, closing her book and looking up at him. “It’s okay if you’re not okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you think it’s ‘fine’ when you’re scared every time a door closes outside, or when you get anxious in the dark?” she demanded. “You shouldn’t have to live with that.”

“The same could be said for the last fucking forty years of your life,” Malcolm retorted. “Claustrophobia, anxiety, depression, fuck all in the way of self-esteem. Need I go on?”

“I did try and get help with all that, at different stages of my life.”

“And yet here you are, still claustrophobic, anxious, depressed and underconfident.”

“It was my choice, Malcolm.”

He stared her in the face. “And this is mine.”


	6. The Knife's Edge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the party. It's about to get a bit hairy.
> 
> In other news, I am in no way okay and my therapist just made it a million times worse.

“Bide at peace, Dad!” Bella ordered sternly, pressing an ice pack to the corner of his forehead and over his cheekbone. Her hand was firm as she held him still, until he took over control of the ice pack.

Malcolm watched the scene around him, disconnected from it and from himself. Nicola was wiping Jamie’s lip and checking his eye, the skin around which was already coming up bruised, ignoring the bruise coming up on her own jaw. Glenn was circling his shoulder, like he had sprained it, while Terri cleaned up Olly’s nose as he held its bridge to stem the bleeding. Malcolm looked up at Bella, whose bright blue eyes tore through him. She was the only one uninjured. Who knew a Traveller’s ability for fighting would come in handy in the British Government?

Though her stare was intense, Malcolm was surprised to find no anger at all there. “What happened?” she asked. Her voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “It’s like an Arbroath pub on a Saturday night round here!”

“Remind me to have words with your fucking mother about letting you go to the pubs in Arbroath when you were a kid,” Malcolm retorted darkly.

“Like she knew about it,” snorted Bella. “And stop avoiding the question.”

Malcolm looked down at the floor. He didn’t know what happened. It was a total blur. He vaguely recalled his fist hitting Jamie’s face, and Olly trying to get between them. It occurred to Malcolm that Olly would only have stepped in and risked his own safety if he thought Jamie was in very real danger. “I don’t know,” he murmured honestly. “I fucking can’t remember.” But as he said it, he found a memory of hands trying to hold him back, and that he had lashed out backwards at them. He could remember Bella appearing from nowhere twisting his arm behind his back, and the weight of more than one person holding him down.

It came in snippets, in flashes of vision and fright that he couldn’t put all the pieces together. He got unsteadily to his feet. “Ca-canny, Dad,” Bella warned him. “You’ve had a knock to the-”

“I’m fine,” he interrupted her. “Nicola, sit down,” he said, carefully and gently placing his ice pack against Nicola’s jaw. It was a massive relief when she showed him no fear, and rested her hand over his. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” Nicola replied. “I know. But Malcolm…do you see now that you’re ill?”

* * *

 

** Sunday **

“The fridge is empty, the beds need changed, the whole place needs hoovered, the kids’ uniforms-”

“You go out and get food,” Malcolm broke through Nicola’s fretting. “I’ll get started on everything here.”

Nicola smiled gently and said, “You did enough after my surgery, Malcolm, it’s fine.”

“Nic’la, stop being fucking stupid and take the help,” he groaned. “Go on. Get the shopping, take the kids out for lunch, see if you can get Ben new trainers – his ones are laughing at him. And Ella needs hair bobbles. Had to give her the elastic band from around one of my files on Thursday. When you come back, this place will be fucking sparkling.”

“Yeah, sorry about leaving them with you on Thursday morning,” she said, lifting the empty laundry basket and giving it to him. “Terri fucked up and offered the Telegraph breakfast with me instead of lunch. Didn’t tell me about it until six that morning, and someone had to stay here and get the kids ready.”

Malcolm snorted. How typical of Terri to get her mealtimes the wrong way around. But beyond that, he had a serious question for her, one he’d wanted to ask for a while. “Why do you keep apologising for leaving the kids to me? And why don’t you want me to do any housework?”

Nicola frowned at him, like he’d just asked the most bizarre question on the planet. “Because it’s not your job. The kids, the house, that’s my job. You shouldn’t have to bother with all that.”

He almost laughed, but for the fact that underneath the superficial ridiculousness of it, he realised it came from years of not being able to trust James, or that James had refused to clean anything or look after his own kids on a regular basis. “I make as much mess as you do,” he reminded her. “Why shouldn’t I do some of the cleaning? And the kids – I knew when I married you I’d be taking responsibility for them. Stop saying sorry for things I’ve offered to do.”

She was quite obviously floored. Was it so difficult to believe he wanted an active role in this family? Hadn’t he proven that over the course of their relationship? “But why would you want to? You’re only offering out of some misguided sense of duty.”

Malcolm raised his eyebrows at her. “Seriously? That’s what you think?”

“Of course,” she said simply. “Why else would you do it when I’m fit to do it myself?”

He let out his breath slowly and set the laundry basket down on the kitchen counter, trying to find the patience and words to explain why he was willing to pull his weight. Malcolm put his arms around his wife’s waist and made sure he was looking her in the face; he needed her to believe this, or they were just going to be left with one more thing to argue over. “There’s absolutely no fucking reason everything should be left to you. You work, too, not just me. I don’t want my wife exhausted because she’s cleaning up after me and taking on everything herself. That’s not fair. Being married is meant to be a partnership, Nic’la, not the wife ending up with another mouth to feet and another arse to run after.”

Horrifyingly, this really did seem to be news to Nicola. “But you’re stressed and-”

“And you’re not?” challenged Malcolm. “Apart from everything else, I’ve never had a family. I’ve never been a cog in anything except the government and the press. So helping here, seeing the kids off to school, cooking dinner, helping with the cleaning, it’s…” he hesitated. He was about to admit to something he’d never even recognised in himself until now. “It makes _me_ feel good, Nicola. It’s good for me. When I’m away from work, I want to be a husband and a dad, and I want to do it properly.”

“See? It’s a sense of obligation.”

“No, you fucking doughnut!” Malcolm laughed. “It’s because I love you, and I love the kids. I _want_ to look after you.”

“That might just be the swee-”

“If you even mention the word ‘sweet,’ I’ll set you up for another Telegraph breakfast.” Nicola grinned, seemingly convinced he didn’t feel obligated to do housework. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Go. Have some time with the kids. Just make sure you get me some chocolate, would you?”

Nicola laughed. “You’re worse than a teenage girl with PMT,” she giggled at him. “What happened to all the chocolate you asked Ella to pick up on her way home from school on Friday?”

“Well, last night when you fell asleep, we ate it while we watched _Ice Age_.”

“The whole lot?! Jesus, Malcolm,” she said, shaking her head with a smile. “Right, chocolate. Anything else?”

“Don’t think so,” he replied. “Just try and have a nice time, okay? Don’t fucking worry about anything needing done here.”

He kissed her forehead and picked up the laundry basket once more, heading upstairs to find the school uniforms that probably should have been washed yesterday had either he or Nicola been in the frame of mind for that much effort. Busied with finding the right clothes, and splitting the whites from the colours, he barely registered Nicola leaving with the children. How the fuck did Ben’s socks always manage to find their way under his chest of drawers, anyway?

While the whites were washing, Malcolm tidied the kids’ rooms and vacuumed the whole house; by the time he put the hoover away, the shirts were finished, and he put them in the tumble dryer and started the coloured components of the school uniforms. He rifled through the airing cupboard for four fresh sets of bedding, and stripped and made his and Nicola’s bed, then Ben’s, then Sophie’s. By the time he got to Ella’s room, he was being reminded by his back that he was fifty, not fucking twenty.

With a groan, Malcolm lifted the pillows to strip them, and promptly found himself frozen. There, lying on the pale lilac sheet, was a butcher’s knife. “Fucking hell,” he muttered. “What’re you thinking, Ella?!”

He picked up the knife, trying to figure out from where she could have acquired it. She wouldn’t have been able to buy it – there was no way she could have passed for eighteen. No knives had gone missing from the house; he would have noticed that. Victoria and Bella had said nothing about any of their knives disappearing. Someone outside of the family must have given it to her, or she must have stolen it from elsewhere.

Malcolm set the knife down on the bedside table and hastily stripped and made the bed. He looked through the rest of her drawers for other weapons, and for plasters or anything else that might suggest she had been harming herself. There was nothing. Just this knife from under her pillow. He searched Ella’s school bag and found nothing but jotters, textbooks and her pencil case – which contained only stationary.

Downstairs, he found Ella’s school coat hanging up, and searched the pockets. There were coins, lip balm, earphones…and a pocket knife. A locking knife. If she was caught with that in her pocket, she’d be in deep shit. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know where she’d got that.

In the living room, he placed the knives on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa, his face in his hands. This, he realised, wasn’t about Ella harming herself. It was about her defending herself. Malcolm didn’t even know what to do – could he tell Nicola, or would it only freak her out? She already seemed to believe she was the one who brought danger onto the family; what would be her reaction if she found out her daughter was scared enough to carry an illegal knife around in her coat pocket? How had nobody found that fucking meat knife before? Had they not been paying enough attention?

But then Malcolm remembered they normally stripped the beds on a Monday morning, just after the kids got up, and let the beds air during the day. He was only doing it today because Ben and Sophie had school trips tomorrow, and had to leave an hour earlier than usual. Ella must have been hiding it when she got up every Monday morning, or else she had only recently got hold of it.

Not for the first time, Malcolm sought the sensible nature of his mother-in-law. So, he picked up the knives and headed for the car, trying not to imagine just how terrified Ella had to be if she was keeping things like this from her parents. The fifteen-minute drive was unpleasant, for Malcolm was on edge and lacked the patience for other road users. When he parked in front of Victoria’s house, he was well and truly worked up.

He took the knives in one hand and got out to knock on her door. She invited him in, looking both worried and confused. Malcolm dreaded to think what expression his face adorned, but at the moment, there was little he could do about that. He put the knifes on the coffee table in front of them, staring at them like they’d been used in some heinous crime. “Bloody hell,” Victoria said, picking up the locking knife. “Aren’t these things illegal?”

“Illegal to carry in public, anyway,” Malcolm muttered.

“And why have you got these?”

“I found them. The locking knife was in Ella’s jacket pocket. The kitchen knife was under her pillow.”

Victoria’s face drained white, but that was the only thing that betrayed her horror. Otherwise, she remained perfectly calm, as she always did. “Do you think she’s harming herself?” asked Victoria.

Malcolm shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I think she’s carrying them in case she gets attacked. There isn’t any other fucking reason to carry a locking knife in London, is there? Can’t see her needing to skin a rabbit or strip a branch in this bloody city.”

“Does Nicola know?”

“No.”

“Good,” Victoria sighed, putting the locking knife back onto the table. “You need to speak to Ella first, so you can give Nicola facts. Let her speculate and she’ll just fucking drive herself, and you, up the wall.”

And that was the reason he had come here. Not only could Victoria put him at ease and assure him he wasn’t wrong to be panicking about this, but she could tell him whether or not to tell Nicola. Anybody else – anybody who didn’t know or understand her – would have said Nicola was Ella’s mother and should have been told. But Victoria was right. They couldn’t go to her with half-baked theories, because she would lose sight of reasonable behaviour and quite possibly do something to worsen Ella’s state of mind. Added to that was the knowledge that Nicola still carried a great deal of guilt for the horror show those kids got caught up in, and was surely react badly to finding out Ella felt so unsafe she slept with a meat knife under her pillow and went to school with a locking knife in her pocket.

Malcolm looked around at Victoria. He couldn’t verbalise his feelings about this discovery, for he was still trying to figure out exactly what they were. “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed. “Whatever has been going on with Ella, I never fucking thought she’d be doing stuff like this.”

Victoria sighed, her eyes returning to the knives. “She’s obviously frightened,” she said. “You only do something like this if you’re scared. Constantly scared. But you can’t let her keep carrying them either, if for no other reason than that carrying that thing is fucking illegal,” she added, pointing at the pocket knife.

“I know that,” he said. “I know I can’t put them back. But when she realises they’re gone, Victoria, if she’s been depending on them to feel safe, she’ll have the fucking meltdown of the millennium.”

“You’ve got to speak to Ella,” she said, placing a hand on his wrist. “If anybody can get her to talk, it’s you, dear boy.”


	7. Secondment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, thank you to Tereshkova for directing me to take up a storyline I had thought about taking but decided against in the beginning. Don't worry - it's a lighter, funnier side to this story.

“Ella,” Malcolm said quietly as he guided her aside from her siblings. Nicola had just crashed in the door with all the shopping, and was distracted in the kitchen. “Can I have a word, please?”

She didn’t answer him, but she did follow him upstairs into her bedroom. Malcolm closed the door and gestured for her to sit down on the bed. He had set the knives on her bedside table, and watched her as she stared at them fearfully. It couldn’t have been plainer that she was terrified of his reaction. “Don’t worry,” he said gently. “You’re not in trouble, okay? Nobody’s angry with you.” Ella looked around at him when he sat down next to her, her eyes still wide and scared. “But Ella, darlin’, I need to know why you’re hiding knives.”

“I…” she mumbled, but she didn’t get very far.

Malcolm sighed. “Okay. First thing first. Are you hurting yourself?” Ella shook her head. “Are you quite sure about that? ‘Cause if you did something to yourself, I need to-”

“I haven’t hurt myself,” Ella asserted, her voice firmer and clearer. Cautiously, Malcolm believed her, and that one anxiety that she _might_ have harmed herself slowly evaporated. “I just…it’s to protect myself.”

“From what?”

“Whatever’s coming next.”

Malcolm stroked Ella’s hair with the tips of his fingers. “Nothing’s coming for you,” he assured her. “It’s all over with. The only one left with a grudge is Armitage and he’s not getting out of Barlinnie any time soon. You’re safe here, Ella.” He picked up the pocket knife. “Did you know it’s against the law to carry this? If you got caught with that in your coat, you’d be in very fucking deep trouble.” Ella nodded her head. “Where did you get it?”

“My friend stole it from her dad,” confessed Ella. “I stole the big one from another friend’s kitchen one morning when I was waiting for her to walk to school with me.”

“You know you can’t keep them, don’t you?” Malcolm asked her, putting the knife back down. “And I have to tell Mum, Ella. I can’t hide this from her.”

Ella wiped tears away from her face. “She’ll make me go to the doctor.”

He put his arm around his daughter and pulled her close. “Would that be so bad? If they could help you stop being so scared? Or if they could help you understand what happened to James, and explain to you all the reasons it wasn’t your fault? You could feel so much better for it.”

She looked down at her hands, her fingers fidgeting with her sleeves. “I’m not sure I deserve to feel better,” she admitted. “I killed a man.”

“You didn’t kill anybody,” he said. He would never stop saying that, for as long as Ella blamed herself for James’ death. “That wasn’t your fault.”

Ella looked up at from her fingers to the knives, still crying. “I can’t keep living like this, can I, Dad? I can’t keep carrying knives and screaming through the night.” She leaned into his chest, and Malcolm pressed a kiss to her head. “I’m always tired. My friends are getting sick of me not being able to have fun. And when I close my eyes…” she said, but broke down into sobs before she could get the rest of it out. Malcolm held her to his chest and rocked her gently. He was ashamed of the relief he felt that he would not have to confess to his own past sins to steer his daughter down the right path.

This had been the way it had to go. Ella had to find herself in trouble – or what she perceived as trouble – before she could accept she needed help. “We can take you to a counsellor,” Malcolm said. “If you want some help, Ella, we will get you what you need.”

He felt her nod against his chest. “Dad,” she sniffed, “I think Mum needs to know I killed James, before I go anywhere.” Malcolm rubbed her back. “But I don’t think I can do it. Would you tell her for me? Please?”

He squeezed her tightly and said, “If that’s what you want. But not today, okay? You’ve been through enough today. I’ll tell her tomorrow, once we’re back from work and school.”

Ella wrapped her arms around his torso and nuzzled her forehead into his chest, still crying but in control of herself. “Thank you.”

* * *

 

** Monday **

Malcolm stalked over to the Scottish Office, Olly in tow, to provide Bella with a stand-in for an advisor of hers who had come down with shingles. Given the Scottish Office was far busier than DoSAC, and Nicola had complained about Olly’s bullshit attitude a few nights previous, Malcolm decided to temporarily relocate Olly and let Bella terrorise him for a couple of days. He had briefly caught a glimpse of Nicola grinning triumphantly as he led the impudent twat to his doom. With any luck, he’d catch shingles from the vacant desk.

At the building’s entrance, he was surprised to see Aoife Hannigan, tall and pale, her black hair tied into a messy bun. She carried a box under one arm and held Alasdair’s hand in the other. “Hey, Malcolm,” she smiled.

“Aoife,” he answered. “What’re you doing here?”

“Ah, Bella left this at the front door. Forgot it,” Aoife indicated to the box by shifting her hip slightly. “And this little maggot’s been meltin’ me head all morning so I said we’d come and drop it off for her.”

Malcolm looked down at Alasdair, whose mischievous smile told him everything he needed to know about what kind of morning Aoife had endured.

“Hiya, Grandad!” Alasdair grinned up at him. Malcolm picked the four-year-old up into his arms and fixed his suncap so it shielded his eyes at this new height.

“Have you been tormenting Aoife?” Malcolm asked him.

“Nooooo,” he drew out dramatically.

Malcolm led them all inside, glaring at Olly with the dare to pass comment on his relationship with his grandchild. He rather thought everyone around him at work still struggled to see him as a grandfather to two young children. As Aoife overtook them now that she had two free hands to carry Bella’s box of papers, Malcolm caught Olly watching the young woman walking, his eyes fixed lower than Malcolm was happy with. So he reached out and slapped Olly around the back of the head. “Ow!” he exclaimed. “What was that for?!”

Malcolm raised an eyebrow at him and snapped, “Get the eyes back in their sockets, ye smarmy streak of piss! She’s twenty-one, for fuck’s sake!”

When they reached Bella’s office, Olly was still rubbing the back of his head with a sulky expression, and Malcolm was seeing for himself why Nicola wanted rid of the sleazy twat for a couple of days. “I’ve brought you an understudy,” Malcolm said as he entered the room behind Aoife, and let Alasdair down to run to his mother. “He’s on loan from DoSAC. I know the temptation will be fucking unbearable but please don’t break him. Warranty ran out a fucking long time ago and Nicola’s not taking returns on cunts today.”

Bella laughed, picking up Alasdair and sitting him down onto her desk. Olly looked terrified. Behind Bella, her aide – Laura, Malcolm thought her name was – sniggered behind the file she was reading. She put down the file and showed her face. Olly, the predictable twat that he was, instantly perked up. Laura was quite pretty, with hazel eyes and her hair dyed a dark shade of red; she was only a few years younger than Bella, but was brighter and had more brains than half of Westminster put together. “Oh, Christ,” Laura said, the Invernesian twang evident in her accent. “Is this the replacement for Conor?”

Olly drew himself into a stance he obviously thought was confident but just made him look arrogant. “Olly Reeder. Here to save Scotch people everywhere,” he smiled, holding his hand out to shake.

Laura didn’t smile back. “Whisky is Scotch. People are Scottish.” With that she walked out of the room.

Bella clipped Olly around the ear and said, “She’s gay. Even less fucking interested in you than any straight woman with half a brain stem.” Aoife was giggling behind her hand as Olly went red with embarrassment. Even Malcolm was fighting back laughter. Bella pressed a pile of folders into his arms and said, “Cross-government plans for rural social development. Scan them onto the system.”

“Don’t you have lackeys for that?”

“Aye. You’re one of them.” Olly opened his mouth but clearly thought better of whatever he had been about to say. “Fuck off, then, dickweed!”

Olly scurried out to the only vacant desk in the central office. Malcolm heard him mutter, “Why do Scottish people keep fucking hitting me?”

Bella met Malcolm’s gaze and burst out laughing, giving him the permission to laugh at what had just happened. Aoife had been giggling quietly the whole time, but let her mirth free when everyone else caved in to it. “That man’s a fucking moron,” Malcolm chuckled.

“You’re using the word loosely there, Malcolm,” snorted Aoife. “He was lucky I didn’t clatter him before.”

Bella shot her a questioning look, which Malcolm answered with, “Wandering eye syndrome.”

There was a knock at the door. Laura stood there with a bag slung over her shoulder. “I’m going for lunch, Bella. Want anything?”

Before Bella could answer, Alasdair cried out, “Lunch! I’m hungry too!”

Aoife rolled her eyes, and Malcolm knew why: that boy was always fucking hungry. Laura looked at Bella and said, “He can come with me, if you want. And Aoife, obviously. Not trying to kidnap your kid or anything. There’s that café over the way that sells Irn Bru.”

Bella smiled slightly, and took a twenty pound note and gave it to Aoife. “Not a whole can of Irn Bru,” she warned them. She kissed Alasdair’s head and let him down from the desk to head for lunch. As he ran away with the two women, Bella smiled slightly. “ _That_ is why he’s not going to some fucking nursery. There’s nothing they can teach him Aoife and I can’t, and I don’t want my kinchins holed up in a room until it’s totally necessary.”

Malcolm’s phone rang. Nicola. “Aye, Nic’la,” he greeted her.

“One of us has to go down to the Science Museum. Something’s happened with Sophie. If you can delay this BBC interview, I’ll go and get her and she can sit in your office until one of us can take her home.”

“Aye, I’ll phone them. Just go and get her. I’ll meet you back at Number Ten.”

“Thanks, Malcolm.”

He hung up and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Why was it there was always a fucking issue with his kids? “What’s happened?” he heard Bella ask.

Malcolm lowered his head to look at her. “Dunno yet. Something to do with Sophie. Nicola’s gonna go and pick her up.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I’ve got to go and postpone the BBC. If he starts glitching,” he added, nodded out the door at Olly, “just fucking hit him ‘til he works.”

As he strode back to Downing Street, he phoned his contact at the BBC and said their interview had to wait until two o’clock. Fine by them, they said, since it wasn’t to go out until half past six anyway. He tried not to imagine what Sophie might have done. She was such a quiet girl, he couldn’t really picture her doing anything to anyone. But then, how was he to know what was going on in her head when she never fucking spoke?

It was another anxiety, adding to the stress of not yet knowing exactly how he was going to tell his wife their daughter believed she had committed murder, and had been secreting knives on her person and under her pillow. By the time he reached his office, Malcolm’s head was pounding as his blood pressure rose. This was fucking unsustainable. He was dreading everything that came his way – his wife, his children, his home. Helplessness and strain and anxiety ran through him like lightning, and there was nothing he could do until he found out exactly what Sophie had done. He could only hope that his first thought, that she had erupted after months of silence and hurt someone, was mistaken. He didn’t think he could handle that. Sophie was his sweet, quiet, smart little girl. He had never believed she had it in her to harm anyone. She had asked his permission to smack Armitage across the head with a caman, for fuck’s sake. She wasn’t capable of malicious violence.

All he could do was wait. Distract himself with emails and spin, and wait for Nicola to return with Sophie.


	8. Silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm still up at 5.15am. No, I'm not okay. Thanks to Tereshkova for checking over the bit about Sophie (I'd had a drink).

When Nicola came back with Sophie, it became quickly apparent that the problem was much more serious than he first thought. On Sophie’s pale, tear-stained face, finger-shaped bruises were coming up in full technicolour, her hair dishevelled and scruffy where it had been pulled from the constraints of her Alice band. Malcolm took them into the office and closed the door. “What the hell happened?” he asked, crouching down to examine the finger marks on his child’s face.

“Sophie won’t say anything,” Nicola sighed, “but the teacher told me he found some of the other kids pinning her against the wall, moving her mouth up and down like a puppet.”

“The wee fuckers,” growled Malcolm, enraged on Sophie’s behalf that children had found it in them to be so fucking cruel. He looked into Sophie’s eyes and found she was holding back tears. Without hesitation, he followed his instinct and put his arms around Sophie. She was only a child, for fuck’s sake; she’d endured enough without being bullied at school on top of it all. There was a reason she didn’t speak and even if Malcolm didn’t fully understand it, Sophie had a right to it. That was her coping mechanism, and as far as coping mechanisms went, it was less destructive than either of her siblings’ attempts.

“They’re all having their parents dragged in tomorrow morning.” Malcolm looked up at Nicola over Sophie’s shoulder, and whatever his face was saying, it gave Nicola the need to warn him, “Don’t you dare go down there, Malcolm. Not today. Let the school deal with it.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “Get back over to DoSAC for that interview. And do _not_ fuck it up.”

Nicola glared at him, but accepted that she did need to go and deal with the BBC – Malcolm couldn’t delay them a second time. So she turned Sophie to face her and said, “I’ll be back soon, sweetheart. You stay here in Daddy’s office until I come back, and then we’ll go home, okay?” Sophie nodded, and Nicola bent down and kissed her head. She gave Malcolm another look of warning as she left, but she did leave him in charge of Sophie.

When Sophie turned back to him, she was crying again, and this time there was no silence in it. She was howling. “It’s okay,” he hushed her, cuddling her tight. “It was horrible. But it was them, not you.” He felt her shake her head against his neck, and stood her upright in front of him. “What is it?” he asked her. Sophie didn’t speak, but it was written in her face that there was something she hadn’t told him. “Sophie? Has this happened before?”

“They…” she murmured. He tried to hide his surprise that she had opened her mouth; there were entire days that passed where nobody could get a word out of her, much less get her to answer such an important question. “They don’t like me, Daddy.” It came out as a whisper, like she was telling him the greatest secret on Earth.

“Why don’t they like you?” Sophie looked terrified. “Sophie?”

“I can’t talk,” she whispered. “I have to be quiet, like when we hid in the woods. I can’t make any noise, or take up any space.”

“Why not?”

“Something bad might happen.”

“Like what?”

“Someone might get in trouble, or hurt, or…” her voice petered out, like she had exhausted all her words. But she spoke again, just not on the subject of Scotland. “They think I’m strange at school. The other kids make fun of me because I’m scared of talking. They try to make me say things, and they hold me down until I say something.” It was more than she had said to anybody in weeks, maybe months.

Malcolm didn’t answer her immediately. He took her over to a chair and opened her school bag to find her hair brush, and set about fixing the mess that had been made of her. As he stood behind her and ran the brush through the waves of her hair, he finally decided what he had to tell her. “You never have to say anything, Sophie,” he said carefully, “but you should also _never_ be afraid to speak. Nobody is going to hurt you, and nobody’s going to get hurt. It’s safe for you to speak. What happened in the woods was the exception, not the rule, okay?” Malcolm stepped around the chair and leaned down to put the band back in her hair, pushing back the locks from her face. “Nothing is going to happen to anyone if you talk.”

Sophie nodded and said, “Yes, Dad,” but Malcolm wasn’t sure she really believed him. He made a mental note to tell her counsellor before their next appointment, though, and set about finding something for Sophie to pass the time with.

* * *

 

It was with nothing short of sheer dread that, after the kids had been put to bed, Malcolm sat Nicola down on the sofa. How was he supposed to do this? She was already upset enough that Ella confided more in him than in her mother, and she already blamed herself for what happened in Scotland. And now, to have to tell her one daughter was carrying knives and believed she killed James, and the other was being bullied at school because she was terrified of talking? How could he tell Nicola that without breaking her heart?

“Malcolm, what’s wrong?” she asked.

He put his hands together, still not certain of what he was going to say, or which matter he was going to address first. “Right, Nic’la, what I’m gonna tell you would usually send you flying into a fucking monster of a panic attack,” he said. “There’s three things I need to say, and I need you to listen and take it with the reassurance that we can do something about it. Just, please, do not do what you normally do.”

Nicola was staring at him, already panicking about what hadn’t been said yet. “What?”

“Sophie,” he said gently, “she’s being bullied at the school.”

“Well, obviously,” Nicola retorted. “They had her up against the wall.”

“Yeah, but it’s been going on for a while. They bully her because she’s scared of talking,” he explained. “And she’s scared of talking because of what happened with James. She’s got it in her head that if she speaks, makes too much noise, all fucking hell will break loose.”

Nicola drained white. “That’s why she’s so quiet?”

“She told me this afternoon.”

“Jesus,” sighed Nicola, leaning forwards and putting her face in her hands. “My little girl. I should’ve seen it – Christ knows I was fucking picked on enough at school to know the signs.” Malcolm reached out and rubbed her back; he needed her calm and able to take in what he had to say about Ella. “I’m a shit mother, Malcolm. My baby girl’s scared and she’s being bullied and I couldn’t see it!”

He ran his fingers through her hair, trying to soothe her before he delivered the next blow. Malcolm got up and went to the locked drawer in the sideboard and took out Ella’s knives.

“The second thing,” he said as Nicola moaned in trepidation, “is this.” He turned around and held up the knives for Nicola to see. “The wee one was in Ella’s coat pocket. The big fucker was under her pillow.” Nicola dived to her feet and crossed the room to him, and took the knives from him so she could examine them. “She promised she’s not been self-harming, and I believe her. It’s because she’s scared somebody’s gonna come for her, or us.”

Sensing danger ahead, Malcolm took the knives out of his wife’s hands and locked them back in the drawer. “Oh, my God,” whimpered Nicola. Her hands were covering her mouth, expressing the horror Malcolm had been forced to contain when he’d found out exactly what Ella was up to. Malcolm took her hands away from her face, frightened by how hard they shook. “What’s the third thing?” she asked, in a tone that screamed she would give anything if he refrained from telling her.

Malcolm kept hold of Nicola’s arms, because he wanted to be able to stop her from running away to do anything reactionary and reckless. “Ella thinks she killed James. When the three of you fought over that gun, her finger slipped and pulled the trigger. She saw his face get blown apart – that’s why she can’t sleep.”

Nicola forced her wrists out of Malcolm’s hands and fell back into the nearest armchair. “You’re telling me Ella has seen a man with half his face shot off?” she demanded weakly, her arms crossed over her stomach. “And she didn’t say anything?” Malcolm looked at the floor. “Fucking hell!” Nicola exclaimed when she finally looked at him. “She told you, didn’t she? How long have you known?!”

“Since that night,” he admitted. “She told me while we were waiting in Accident and Emergency at Inverness.”

“And you never thought to tell me?!” she asked hotly.

“She made me promise not to tell you!” Malcolm said. “What the fuck was I meant to do?”

“I’m her _mother_!”

“And I’m her dad!” he stopped her before she could go off on one. “And just the same as Victoria never tells me what’s going on with you, Ella needed me to keep it a secret until she was ready for you to know! She asked me to tell you now, when she is able to face it. And she’s agreed to go to the doctor. It’s what I’ve told you from the fucking start – let her come to that conclusion herself!”

Nicola closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, like she was making a decision. “Alright,” she sighed. “Fine. What’s done is done. We can deal with it tomorrow, when we’ve had some rest and we can think more clearly.”

That was not the fucking reaction he had been expecting. Given Nicola’s recent form, her hellish fight for control and her remorseless fury for anyone who threatened to strip her of it, such a rational and calm response just about floored Malcolm. He’d expected to be shouted at and slapped, and for the kids to be pulled out their beds and forced to explain themselves. “Okay,” he said cautiously. “Okay, we’ll go out for lunch tomorrow and talk about it. Make a fucking plan and salvage what we can from this plane wreck.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” she said, giving him the ghost of a smile. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.” She took him by the hand and together they went upstairs, checking on the children before heading to their own bedroom.

The door closed, and Malcolm was suddenly pulled into a soft and yet passionate kiss. “I love you,” Nicola said. “No matter what, Malcolm, I love you, okay? You have to know that.”

Sirens wailed in Malcolm’s head; he drew back and cupped her face in one hand, the other resting on the curve of her waist. “Nicola? What does that mean?”

“Just in case you’re thinking I hate you for lying about Ella,” she replied. Her fingers traced down his chest until she wrapped her arms around him. This was not normal behaviour for Nicola. They should have been downstairs still, roaring and shouting and swearing. She should have been calling him all the bastards, telling him she wanted him out, telling him he had no right to interfere. Why was she doing this?

In spite of himself, Malcolm looked into her eyes, the colour dancing wildly as she raked over his face. “I love you,” he told her. “My beautiful, brave wife.” It was a moment of emotional honesty that did not come easily to Malcolm, but he knew she needed to hear it. “You’ve been so strong, Nic’la. And I don’t know what the fuck would’ve happened to me if I didn’t have you.”

She kissed him again, this time with urgency and hunger, her fingers knotted painfully into his hair. The force behind her body was greater than he had ever known, even at her most desperate and pained. “Fuck me, Nicola,” Malcolm breathed, trying to halt her with his hands firmly on her waist. “What’re you playing at?”

“I want my husband,” she said, her hands still in his hair, refusing to be moved. “Let me have my husband. Stop being scared of hurting me. It’s been nearly four months since my surgery. You’re not going to hurt me.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Malcolm argued. “I’m not thick. I know I’m not gonna fucking hurt you.”

“Then stop worrying,” she smiled. “I’m fine.”

Malcolm didn’t stop worrying. But he did give them what they both needed: the physical intimacy that they had lacked of late, whether through fear, anger, exhaustion, or the logistics of one of them always ending up watching Ella. And Nicola was far from soft with him. Her hands practically tore the hair out of his scalp as she resumed her harsh and intense assault on his mouth, her tongue warm in his mouth. Between low moans and impatient tugs at his clothes, the extent of the emotional load became evident as she let it seep into the stifling air between them.

Her fingernails scraped his back, his legs, his neck – anywhere her fingers touched him, she dug her nails in like she was clinging to him for dear life. He could feel her hands bruise him, and did his best to respond with gentleness and care. The way her back arched in his hands, how her body shivered against his mouth, the softness of her skin against his teeth, reminded him she was human – more human than he was. She let out faint, high-pitched mumblings and moans; the contrast between what came out of her mouth and what came from her hands was night and day, base and acid. In the end, he feared he was as rough with her as she was with him, the difference being he was much bigger and much stronger than her, and could quite easily have hurt her.

“Malcolm,” he heard her whisper. Her hands searched for his face, and he looked down at her. “Malcolm, I love you.” She was the picture of beauty, with darkness in her every touch. And maybe she knew he had seen that, because she dragged him back down until his face was buried into her neck, his lips on her jugular, and he could not see her eyes. He continued regardless, if for nothing more than the knowledge it was what Nicola believed she needed. Every whimper, every muted cry, told of a woman rattled at her core, her husband her only comfort. Her only escape.

They collapsed together, Malcolm pressing gentle kisses to Nicola’s mouth with the reminder, “I love you.” Nicola pulled him down into the tightest embrace, and he heard her sob into his neck. She was hiding her face. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said to her, moving off of her until he was by her side, sitting up and looking down into her watery eyes as she leaned up on her elbows. “What’s this?”

But she didn’t answer. She just sat up and threw her arms around his neck, in the kind of hug expected at airports and on doorsteps, and at the sides of cars before long journeys. Malcolm kissed her cheek and stroked her knotted hair until she stopped crying and lay down, to fall asleep in his arms.


	9. Curse or Cure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am 100% not okay but this was planned and half-written and needed updated. It's literally the only halfway productive thing I've achieved today. It's a wonderful life.

** Wednesday **

Malcolm found himself with Ella again that night, when she woke around midnight. He offered to go and let Nicola rest, for she had exhausted herself when she had overflowed with emotion. He was still worried about her – every so often, she did something like this, and it wasn’t normal. Not for her. She rarely chose to pour her heart out like that, to leave herself so vulnerable to him. When she did, Malcolm usually discovered later it was because it had nowhere else to go.

He had tried to stay awake, even when Ella fell asleep, listening out for signs that Nicola had got out of bed. But it was no good. He was as tired as she was, and ended up asleep next to Ella within an hour.

It was a thump outside that woke him up. Bleary eyed, he looked over at Ella’s alarm clock. 2:09am. The early hours of Wednesday morning. The noise had startled him, but Malcolm managed to remind himself that it was probably just someone on a nightshift, or coming home from a party. Ella was still sound asleep, calmed by the idea that her dad was protecting her, and that her mum knew the truth and still didn’t hate her.

There was a noise from the bathroom, and Malcolm dived out of bed as quickly as he could without waking Ella up. He realised now that it wasn’t a noise – it was the absence of a noise. The tap had just been turned off. It had been running just quietly enough not to make an obvious noise, and only alerted him with its silence. He listened as someone got into the bath.

Out on the landing, he knocked lightly on the door. “Nicola?” he asked quietly. “Is that you in there?” When there was no answer, Malcolm opened the door. There sat Nicola in the bath, fully clothed. On the unit next to the bath, there was a knife and boxes of pills Nicola had been prescribed. He snatched them away from her reach and forcibly stood her up, working only on the need to get her out of harm’s way. She fought him, but he was larger and stronger, and had no qualms about leaving hand-shaped bruises on her if it was going to save her life.

“Malcolm, leave me,” she hissed in his face. Raised by the bath, she was almost the same height as him, and they stood eye-to-eye. There was a deranged look in her eyes, of a woman who could not see a way forwards. “Let me do this.”

“Don’t be so fucking ridiculous,” he snorted. Having had enough of trying to drag her out, Malcolm scooped her up into his arms and carried her through to their bedroom, grabbing a towel on the way past. She needed to be dry and warm before they could talk about anything, so he stripped her down, dried her off and dressed her in fresh pyjamas. The ends of her hair were wet, and he found a hair bobble to tie it up away from her shoulders. She was silent, and still, and submissive – everything she hadn’t been mere hours ago.

So as not to wake the children, he led her downstairs to the living room, unnerved by his wife’s sudden silence. She curled up into the corner of the sofa, her knees up at her chin. “Nic’la,” Malcolm sighed, “why didn’t you fucking tell me the truth?”

It was the aftermath of the voice recording all over again. He should have pressed her harder earlier when she so fiercely made love to him, or when she had thrown her arms around him in what he now recognised as a hug goodbye. She had been saying goodbye.

Malcolm reached out for her hand, but she quickly drew it away. Nicola got to her feet and headed down the hallway to the kitchen, where she opened the cupboard and poured herself a glass of wine. “Nicola, no,” Malcolm groaned. “Don’t fucking do this again. Please, don’t do this.”

But she put the glass to her mouth, and Malcolm pulled it out of her hands and poured its contents down the sink. Nicola stared straight in front of her. There was still a madness about her, but it was silent. But it was on the surface. It was there for him to see, and he feared she had lost the capacity to bury it. Even worse, he rather thought he had been the one to take that ability from her. She walked away from him, back to the living room, and Malcolm was thankful that he had locked Ella’s knives away and taken the key.

He found her sitting on the sofa again, in the same position as before. “Talk to me, Nicola,” he said. “Tell me why.”

The only acknowledgement she gave that she had heard him was a tiny shake of her head.

“What the fuck triggered this?”

She stared into nothing. Malcolm felt like he was going mad. He couldn’t let her just not speak. Every time he let her do that, it nearly killed her.

“Are you gonna fucking speak?”

Her head shook again.

There was nothing else for it. He picked up the house phone and dialled Victoria’s number. The fact it was half past two in the morning be damned – he wasn’t about to let his fucking wife die. “Hello?” Victoria said groggily.

“Hey, Victoria,” Malcolm said, looking directly at Nicola. Now was her chance to open her mouth and talk, before he involved her mother. But she didn’t even look up, and he wasn’t willing to let it get as bad as it did the last time. “I’m sorry to disturb you at half two in the morning.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Your daughter’s just done something very fucking disturbing.”

“Oh, fucking hell,” moaned Victoria.

“And I can’t get anything out of her.”

“What has she done?”

“Ran a bath, got in with all her fucking clothes on,” Malcolm recounted, still not taking his eyes off Nicola. “Managed to get her out before she downed all her medication and fucking slashed her arms open.”

A crack appeared in Nicola’s defence: she closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the sofa. “Do you want me to come over?”

“If you could, I’d be eternally fucking grateful.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour, okay?”

“Thanks.” He hung up. Nicola looked like she was falling asleep, or passing out; he rubbed her shoulder and she jerked away from him. “Have you taken anything?” he asked. She shook her head again, but Malcolm didn’t quite believe her. He had believed her in the past, when she had tried to hang herself right after Katie died, but he didn’t believe her now. “I think you fucking have, Nic’la, and I need you to tell me what it was.”

She did not speak. In the time it took Victoria to get over to the house, he had woken Nicola three times as her head lolled and her eyes closed. She just seemed tired, but Malcolm couldn’t trust it. When he opened the door to Victoria, the first thing he said was, “I think she’s already taken something.”

“Do you know what?” Victoria asked, taking off her coat and handing it to Malcolm.

“No. She keeps drifting off, like she wants to sleep. I’m trying to keep her awake.”

Victoria sighed and went to Nicola, sitting down on the couch in front of her daughter. “What’s going on, darling?” asked Victoria. “Have you taken any pills?”

Nicola covered her face with her hands. She wasn’t very good at lying to her mother, Malcolm found. Even if she managed to lie to him, there was usually something that stopped her short of lying to Victoria, unless Nicola was convinced it was going to protect her family from harm. “Zopiclone,” she mumbled.

“Sleeping pills,” Victoria said to Malcolm. “How many?” she added to Nicola.

“Just one.”

“Are you quite sure, Nicola?” Victoria said, her voice more urgent.

“Yeah,” she said. “I took it just before I got into the bath.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to be peaceful. I didn’t want to be awake.”

Malcolm rubbed his forehead, trying not to panic. She had been determined. Far more determined than her previous attempts. She had planned to fall asleep in the bath after taking a cocktail of drugs and cutting her wrists. He wanted to hold her hand, to tell her he loved her, but he knew she wouldn’t hear it if he said it. “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to keep you awake,” Victoria asserted, “and you are going to tell me what the fucking hell is going on.”

He sat down on the floor at Nicola’s side. “We need you to speak, Nicola, or we can’t help you,” he reminded her.

Though she did not look at Malcolm, she did start talking. “I’m a useless mother, a shit wife, a crap daughter, an incompetent Cabinet minister. I’m the weak link. There’s no reason to be here. You’re better off with me dead. The kids are better left with their dad.”

Malcolm took her hand and refused to let her pull it away. “That is not fucking true,” he told her. “I’d be lost without you, Nic’la, don’t you fucking see that?” He pressed his lips to her fingers, remembering that he had done that the day he succumbed to the idea he may have started to fall for her. “And as for weak? You’re surviving cancer. There’s nothing fucking weak about that.”

“I think you know that’s not true,” Victoria said gently. “I think you know your family needs you.” Nicola drew her knees even closer to her chest, like she was protecting herself from the things her mum was saying. “I reckon that what’s happened here is you’ve collapsed under the weight of everything you’ve been through.”

“I haven’t been through anything.” It was the same defence Malcolm used, and he didn’t realise that until he heard it from Nicola.

Malcolm squeezed her hand. “Look at me.” She refused. He looked at Victoria for help.

“Look at your husband, Nicola,” Victoria said. “I know you don’t _want_ to be reminded of how much he loves you, but you need it.”

Nicola slowly turned her head and looked at Malcolm; in her eyes, he could see both the defence and everything it tried to shield, and the tears she was holding back. “Your first husband abused you for _years_ ,” Malcolm reminded her. “He _raped_ you. Then Katie died, and James tried to kill you. Then I went off the rails because I found out about Bella, and you pulled me back. Then you ended up with cancer, and you had to pull me back again. Then James got out of jail. You found out he was scamming the government and he was the one who got Katie killed, because she and her best mate found out about it. He stalked us into the Highlands and he nearly fucking shot you. You nearly drowned. He died. And Ella thinks she killed him – I know you blame yourself for that. You’ve been through a fucking lot, Nicola,” he told her gently. “And you admitted yourself that the last time you went for counselling, you skated over the worst of what happened to you.”

Victoria looked between Nicola and Malcolm, with a rather shocked expression. “What do you mean, he abused her for years?” she demanded. “I know he raped her and he battered her when Katie died, but what else happened?”

“How long have you got?” Malcolm retorted darkly.

Nicola covered her mouth and let out a muffled sob, hunched over herself. Her legs collapsed sideways as her body lost its energy. It seemed to be the mention of James’ treatment of her that triggered that reaction, or perhaps it was because her mother now knew she had lied to her for years and years. Malcolm got up onto his knees and took his wife gently into his arms. She felt tiny. Breakable. “I’m sorry,” she cried.

“It’s okay,” he assured her. He held her head into his shoulder her and let her break, like she ought to have done as soon as she found out about the state of her daughters. “I’m not going anywhere.” He cradled her like he had done the day Katie died, though spared the blow to the face this time around. “I think you need to tell your mum the truth, my love. She needs to understand why you are the way you are.”

Nicola’s grip on him tightened, and he knew that idea terrified her. But if Victoria knew everything, she might be able to help in ways Malcolm couldn’t. He was too close to it to be able to give her objectivity. Nicola was the only person who did that to him, and it scared him. It came from love that blinded him, and he had never known that until he loved her. He still was not used to the idea he could love someone so much that he couldn’t think logically about what might help her.

He pushed her back slightly and put his hands gently on her face. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Mum’s the one person I have who thinks I’m strong and good.”

“Because you _are_ ,” Malcolm told her earnestly, pushing stray locks of hair back from her face. “And your mother isn’t about to think any less of you for what James fucking Murray put you through.”

“I will never think less of you,” Victoria promised Nicola. She looked around, like she was trying to decide whether or not she was able for this. “But I need to know what happened, Nicola. Malcolm’s right. I can’t help you properly if I don’t know what first sent you this way.”

Malcolm got up and gently moved Nicola forward, positioning them so she was sitting between his legs, his arms around her waist as she leaned her tired head on his shoulder. He rested his chin on the top of her head; her hand found his as it rested on her stomach. “I’m here,” he assured her.

He held Nicola as she began to recount the joys of being James Murray’s wife, watching as Victoria’s expression grew more and more horrified with every incident described to her. “And I had to stop him hurting the kids,” Nicola explained. This was the part Malcolm hated most. “So if I thought he was getting so wound up that he might take it out on one of them, I would take him to bed. There was nothing loving or human about it. It was just him getting out his frustrations, and me preferring to let him do it that way rather than hitting me or the kids. I still sometimes think Malcolm is the same, and then I stop myself, because he doesn’t treat me like James did.”

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Victoria. “You never _said_ anything, Nicola! I could have helped.”

“Nobody could have helped. If Katie hadn’t died, I’d probably still be with him.”

He held Nicola close, and decided there and then she was his responsibility. She had been through too much to be trusted with her own safety. It was his responsibility as her husband, with Victoria’s help, to make Nicola safe and well again. That was his job, and he hadn’t been doing it properly if this was what it took to make him take responsibility for her.

Love, he realised now, could be both curse and cure. He just had to make sure his love was the cure, not the curse.


	10. Lost Possibilities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks to Tereshkova for a) helping me with this and b) ensuring I didn't lose my fucking mind.

Malcolm tried all morning to get Nicola to a doctor. Victoria had slept the remainder of the night in the spare room, and had tried to convince Nicola over breakfast that she needed to get some proper help with everything she had endured. Victoria tried every approach available to her – the maternal point of view, the objectivity of a doctor, the argument that she couldn’t hold up everyone else while crumbling herself. Nothing worked. Nicola had flat out refused, maintaining that their first duty was to their children.

They had argued between them quietly for nearly half an hour before going their separate ways for work; Nicola would not budge. Malcolm knew she was only using the need to put the kids first as an excuse not to go and get someone to help her. He resolved to confront her again once Ella’s first therapy appointment was over with, and the school had set up some safeguards to minimise any bullying directed at Sophie. Ben, for all he was filled with rage, would not talk to anyone about it. That was another problem they had to solve, and Nicola was sure to use that as her next excuse. He hoped he wouldn’t be driven to the point of reminding her there would be no saving those children if their mother committed suicide. He knew that better than anyone.

With Olly still seconded to the Scottish Office and Terri worse than useless, it was Glenn Malcolm approached to keep a watch on Nicola. “If you think her state of mind is sliding, just fucking call me,” Malcolm said. “And try and not let Terri fuck up too badly. I know about the breakfast-lunch fuck up last week – I thought even fucking Terri could tell mealtimes apart but clearly I fucking overestimated her cognitive functions.”

Glenn fixed him with a confused expression. “What do you mean?”

“The Telegraph, last Thursday?” Malcolm reminded him. “Nicola didn’t know it was breakfast and not lunch until six o’clock that fucking morning.”

“It _was_ lunch, Malcolm,” Glenn replied. “In fact, Nicola was late. We had to push it back an hour because she didn’t show up here until after twelve. Jamie MacDonald dropped her off – we thought you knew. We thought you’d asked him to take her in, for whatever reason.” Malcolm leaned back against the filing cabinet. Jamie. What the fuck was Jamie doing with his wife for the entirety of Thursday morning? “Don’t you remember a couple of weeks ago, Euan showed up and took her away for a late lunch? Jamie brought her back two hours later. It happens every so often,” he shrugged.

It had been the day Malcolm had walked out and gone to Victoria’s. Malcolm, in his rage that day, had assumed Euan was taking Nicola to go for lunch with Bella, who had been a heady mixture of furious and forlorn after Malcolm’s verbal racial assault on her.

_Let me have my husband._

The words rang in his ears.

Had she looked to someone else, all those times fear, tiredness and anger had kept them apart? Was there a development with her health she felt she could not confide in him? Or something else? Something she needed protected from but didn’t feel able to ask him? She had to be going somewhere with them, if Malcolm was wrong to assume she was seeing to her stepdaughter. Of course, it could be as simple as an affair, with Jamie, or with Euan, or with who fucking knows what man. Or woman. He’d never actually considered whether or not his wife was straight. It was yet another possibility he could not rule out. She was either ill, in danger, or cheating. He didn’t know which option he hated most.

After all, Jamie was around Nicola’s age, and Euan was about ten years younger; he could almost see the attraction of a fit, mentally robust man over a husband who feared the world around him, and all the things that might happen to his wife.

Malcolm looked through the glass walls of Nicola’s office. She was reading over a file, looking thoroughly exhausted. In fairness, she had still been awake at four this morning, telling her mother about the horror story of her first marriage. She was bound to be shattered. If it weren’t for the fact that, no matter what she might have done, Malcolm loved her too much to trigger another lapse in mental health, he would have barged in there and demanded answers. But he couldn’t. Not when he knew she was so fragile.

“Just keep a fucking eye on her,” Malcolm grumbled. “Call me if you need me.”

It played on his mind. He couldn’t decide whether or not he really believed Nicola had it in her to cheat on him. Even in the moments he believed she could, he tried to rationalise it as a symptom of her blatantly awful mental health. Nicola, since returning from Scotland, had not been sensible or rational, and she had done things he had never dreamed her capable of – like telling him he had no right to a say in Ella’s life, and last night’s very much premeditated suicide attempt.

He almost went to confront Jamie. The only reason he didn’t was that he quite frankly didn’t have the energy to do it today. Malcolm was as drained as Nicola. So, he avoided Jamie altogether and phoned the therapist’s office to book an emergency appointment for Ella. Aoife agreed to take Ella out afterwards to take her mind off things. He was thankful for Aoife being so laid back she could well be comatose; she generally gave almost as few fucks as Euan.

Euan. What was going on with him and Nicola? Malcolm could not believe Euan would ever cheat on Bella. He loved her too much and, much like the rest of the human population, was probably terrified of her reaction if he ever did cheat on her. That was what debunked any theory that Nicola might be sleeping with Euan. It didn’t alleviate Malcolm’s worry that she might be shagging Jamie, but at least he could be fairly confident there was nothing between her and Euan.

His train of thought was interrupted when his mobile rang. “Aye, Bella,” he answered, doing his utmost to sound like he had not just been contemplating his shambles of a marriage.

“Dad, can I kill Olly?”

“No,” Malcolm replied.

“Please?”

“What the fuck’s he done?”

“The cross-government files I asked him to scan into the system? He shredded the hard copy. You know, the hard copy with amendments I _still have to fucking send to Edinburgh_. Just asked him for it because the courier’s due at two and he’s-”

“Put it through the fucking shredder.” Malcolm’s head fell onto his hand. Why was it there was always a fucking fire to put out in this fucking place? “I’ll be over in a minute.”

Malcolm made his way over to the Scottish Office, already anxious and fit to burst; he briefly contemplated telling Bella about Euan’s little trips with Nicola, but decided he didn’t want to rock the boat – and he didn’t actually know that Bella didn’t already know about it herself. He didn’t really want to open the door to the idea that yet another person had lied to him.

When he got there, he was confronted by the sight of Bella baring her teeth at Olly as she backed him into a corner. “Did I fucking tell you to shred the papers?” she growled at him. She wasn’t shouting. Bella never _needed_ to raise her voice to scare people shitless.

“No, but-”

“But what?” she interrupted. “But you thought you could spend a couple of days in my department and decide how I should fucking run it?”

Malcolm stood beside Laura Brown – Bella’s aide – at the office door. Laura was doing her best not to smile, and Malcolm didn’t really know why he was called here; there was nothing he could do Bella wasn’t fully capable of doing herself. “You’ve got two hours to find every fucking page of these files on the computer, print them off and put them together _exactly_ the fucking same way the originals came here. Do you fucking understand me?”

“How am I meant to remember what fucking order they were in?!” Olly exclaimed, clearly feeling a bit hard done by. “There’s fucking hundreds of pages! How do you even gather _that_ much data about rural Scotland?!”

“With a lot of fucking hard work,” Bella retorted. “Which is why you better hope to whatever fucking mythical entity you reckon’s watching your back that you got it _all_ onto the computer before you put it through the fucking shredder!” Olly was dazed, standing there with his mouth open like a fucking dead trout. “What are you waiting on, a fucking ‘Printing for Idiots’ manual?!”

She left Olly in a state of traumatised shock when she returned to her own office, her aide and her dad. “How the fuck does Nicola put up with him?” Bella grumbled, throwing herself down into her desk chair. Laura reached over the back of it and rubbed Bella’s shoulders. Malcolm see in his daughter’s face that it had been a shit day so far. “I get more fucking bother from him than all our bairns put together.”

“You didn’t fucking need me here,” Malcolm smirked, almost proud of Bella’s handling of Olly’s stupidity.

“I actually wanted your opinion on something,” Bella said.

Malcolm sat on the edge of the desk, looking down at Bella. It wasn’t often she asked his opinion on anything. “Fire away.”

“D’you think I should send Alasdair to reception? If we were in Scotland, I wouldn’t have this fucking problem; we don’t have reception class. I put Eilidh straight into Primary 1 and she was fine. She was miles ahead of the rest, actually.”

“It’s your kid, Bella,” he reminded her. “Way I see it, he’s only just four, so you don’t have to put him in the school until next year. But if you don’t put him to reception you might not get him into the school you want. It’s not like Scotland. You’ve got to choose a school, not just put him in whichever one’s closest.”

“Everybody else puts their bairns in reception when they’re four,” said Bella. “It’s like Nicola’s problem sending Ella to a private school – won’t the press have something to say if I keep my child out of state school until the last possible moment?”

That was a fair point, but Malcolm weighed it up against the fact Bella wouldn’t be choosing private over state so much as home over nursery. “I think it’s up to you.”

“That’s not fucking helpful.”

“The one thing I’d have to think about if I was you,” he said carefully, not wanting to offend Bella again, “is whether or not he’ll have the skills to get on with other kids if he just goes straight into school. Nicola is right about one thing when it comes to Travellers: they don’t get the same opportunities to socialise their kids that the rest of us take for granted. And I _know_ he sees Eilidh and our lot, but that’s different. That’s family. And you want him able to speak English and not cant in public, which he still hasn’t got the fucking hang of.”

“So you’re saying send him?”

“Do you _want_ to send him?”

“Not really.”

“Could you compromise? Send him to a playgroup for a couple mornings a week or something? Just to get used to speaking English and dealing with other kids.”

It was strange, to be asked an opinion about a child’s education that didn’t involve him forcing some middle-class halfwit – his wife included under that umbrella – not to send their brat to a fancy private school. But his suggestion seemed to perk Bella up a bit. “That might work, I suppose.”

As he laid eyes on his daughter, he was reminded he had never had a say in her education, or lack thereof. He had never seen her off to her first day of school or picked her up from high school after a rough day. On that front, he had never been a parent. He had never been his daughter’s father. It was another thing taken away from him by Bernadette’s decision to keep Bella’s existence a secret. Just another part of life he missed out on.

And it wasn’t just school. It was _everything_. He’d never taught her to ride a bike, or climb a tree, or scale a wall – nothing that his dad had taught him as a very small boy. He had never patched her up after an accident out playing, or listened to her learn to read. In fact, when they finally met, Bella was married with children of her own. She had never been Malcolm’s little girl, because he was never given the opportunity to be there. How could he be her father now when he never got to see her grow up? Was that why they fell out, because there was no real bond between them? What if all the lost possibilities meant they would never be _right_?

He remembered all she had told him about her upbringing – the camps, the school, the bullying, the anger, the injustices – and kicked himself yet again for not being there. He was no real father. He just played pretend while Bella humoured him.

“You okay, Malcolm?” Laura asked. Her hazel eyes bored through him, her hands still on Bella’s shoulders. “You zoned out a wee bit there.”

He blinked and said, “Aye, fine. I’ve got to go and make sure Tom’s not gonna fuck this speech up tomorrow, so I’ll see yous later, okay?”

Bella stood up and kissed his cheek. “Try not to kill him.”

“And you try not to kill that twat,” he replied, nodding his head out the window at Olly, who was dashing between the computer and the printer like he had a rocket lodged firmly up his arse.

Bella laughed and added, “And thanks for the advice about Alasdair. You’re right – I’ll try and find him a playgroup for a few hours a week.”

“No problem,” Malcolm muttered.

By the time he got out onto the street, his head felt like it was going to explode. Between worrying what Nicola was up to, and knowing she was fucking unstable, and now realising he had been no kind of father to Bella, he didn’t think he could fill his head with much more. And yet, he knew he had to go with Nicola to pick Sophie up from school, because the headteacher wanted to speak to them at the end of the school day. He really didn’t think he could face it. There wasn’t enough space in his mind to take in whatever that teacher had to say.

He turned on his heel, horribly aware of the cars’ engines and the chatter of people, and the way the sun shone too brightly down onto his face. An intense pain shot through his head, so disarming that he crouched down with his fingers in his temples and tried to banish this high-pitched squeal ringing in his ears.

It was all ending, crashing at his feet.

His youngest daughters were in pain. His eldest daughter didn’t see him so much as a dad as she did an inconvenience she had to indulge. His son was struggling to recover from events, and couldn’t go a day without losing his temper over very little. His wife, well, even if she didn’t die, he was going to lose her. It was all disintegrating around him, and there was no way to put the pieces back together.

A man got down beside him and asked, “Are you alright?”

Malcolm looked up from the pavement, and realised he was in the middle of the street, crouched down with his fingers against his head. Though a little unsteady, he drew himself back up to his full height, tried to tune out that noise in his ears and the voices in his head, and answered, “Yeah, just a headache. I’ll get back to my office and take some painkillers.”

He did exactly that, but it didn’t help. Everything just got louder, brighter, and harder to block out. It was with a huge amount of effort that he eventually did get up and visit the Prime Minister, and instantly wished he had stayed crouched on the street for the remainder of eternity.


	11. The Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> Anyone got a cure for an epic headache? Because I am so done with this one.

Sophie’s headmistress, Miss Fairley, was an odd-looking woman in her mid-thirties. Malcolm often thought she looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge, until he saw the precision in the way her wildly curly hair was twisted into its slightly mad style, and her winged eyeliner and purple lipstick. In his few visits to Miss Fairley’s office, he had never seen her in a suit or bland work dress; it was always loose, decorative dresses or a bright fifties-style skirt and blouse combination. She was the epitome of individuality. It came as no surprise to Malcolm that Nicola was drawn to such a wacky-looking headmistress for her children. She probably saw a bit of her younger self in that woman.

But the overriding factor that made Miss Fairley a good headmistress was that she was compassionate without giving any sort of impression that she could ever be used as a doormat. “The three children who accosted Sophie in the Science Museum yesterday,” Miss Fairley said to Nicola and Malcolm, “have all been suspended for a week, with the promise of expulsion if I ever get wind of them bullying another person again. Their parents have been informed and told in no uncertain terms that the behaviour their children displayed will not be tolerated, whether they are on school premises or on a school trip.”

Malcolm nodded his head and glanced at Nicola. She was barely there; he only hoped Miss Fairley didn’t notice that.

“But today, I would like to outline a care protocol for Sophie,” Miss Fairley went on. “She’s a vulnerable girl just now, and sometimes I wonder if she feels able to ask for help when she needs it. Is she as quiet at home as she is here?”

Nicola nodded her head but said nothing, so Malcolm decided to elaborate. “She barely speaks at home. But yesterday, I did manage to get something out of her. What happened back in March – Sophie’s got it in her head that if she makes any noise, something bad might happen. I think it’s some sort of post-traumatic reaction. She’s seeing a counsellor but nobody’s a miracle worker.”

“I see,” nodded Miss Fairley. “Well, in that case, do you think it would be worth having a class discussion in the general area of emotional health? Sophie’s class is old enough to understand the bare bones of it. We can explain to them all as a group the different ways people react to fear and distress, and how to understand them. It may help Sophie feel like it’s safe to talk at school, and her peers might learn some compassion for others. Sophie’s not alone in enduring trauma, either. It might be helpful to other children in her class, too.”

“Sophie’s been through too much,” mumbled Nicola. “That’s the problem here. My little girl was always quiet, but she spoke when she felt like it. In the last two years, her sister has died, her father has gone to prison for trying to kill her mum, her mother took a new man into the family, her mum got cancer, she discovered she has a stepsister more than twenty years older than her, her mum got married, her father got out of prison, she was chased into the wilderness of Scotland until she was scared out of her mind, and then, to top it all off, her father died! How can we expect her to shoulder that and recover from the effect it has on her mind?!” It was the proof of Nicola’s own state of mind that her voice had turned shrill as she sacrificed her breath for getting the words out.

Miss Fairley looked at Nicola kindly and said, “If it makes you feel any better, Mrs. Tucker, whenever Sophie or Ben are asked about their family, they have nothing but fondness for their mum and dad.” She reached out and patted Nicola’s arm gingerly, and looked directly at Malcolm. “And yes, whenever they refer to you, Mr. Tucker, they call you their dad.”

Malcolm took Nicola’s hand in his and squeezed it gently, trying to remind her she was safe here, and nobody was judging her ability as a mother.

“Honestly,” Miss Fairley said, “Sophie took most of those things in her stride. She was able to process the emotions and keep going. We all thought she did remarkably well. I really do think you’re right, Mr. Tucker, and that the origins of her quietness come from what you all went through in Scotland.”

“What should we do?”

“I would like to give Sophie time every day to check in with me,” Miss Fairley explained, “so she can have a safe place to talk, and so she can tell me about anything unpleasant that might have happened between her and her classmates.” Miss Fairley, Malcolm realised, was not as hare-brained as she looked. She had this all in hand. She was merely telling them what she intended to do about it. “Please, don’t worry about Sophie’s welfare at school. We want to take good care of her, just as you do.”

* * *

 

That night, Malcolm was the one who sat in the corner of the sofa, wondering what the fucking hell he was supposed to do. Not only was his wife once again suicidal, but there was a distinct possibility she was shagging one of his best mates and even if she wasn’t, she was habitually lying to him about where she was going. She had been vague about her cancer treatment, only telling him that the surgery and the treatment seemed to be working – how could he trust that she was telling the truth about that? She was either cheating or dying.

And Bella – she was barely his child. There was no bond there. They didn’t share a culture or a history. They only things they had in common were politics and blood. Neither meant anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Bella. He loved that girl to death. But she wasn’t his girl. He had done nothing for her expect make her simple life complicated, and her easy family difficult. She put up with Malcolm, nothing more. He could scarcely believe he had managed to delude himself into believing anything else.

Every time he cut a head off this fucking monster, it grew a new one.

Once the kids were in bed, Nicola sat down beside him. “What is it, Malcolm?” she asked gently. “You’ve been weird all day.”

“You’re one to talk,” he retorted. “I wish you’d go to the fucking doctor, Nic’la. You scared the shit out of me.”

Nicola looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be fucking sorry!” Malcolm snapped at her. She looked up at him, her expression one of shock. “I want you to fucking _do_ something! Do you understand the fucking _fear_ you put into me every time you fucking try to hurt yourself?! Are you fucking forgetting I’ve already been there and done that, and I don’t really want to lose my wife to suicide as well?!”

Nicola’s hand fell onto his arm but he pushed it away, too agitated by all he could see going wrong to be able to feel his wife’s touch. “Malcolm,” she whispered. She sounded hurt. “Malcolm, please.”

“Where did you go?” he asked her. He had to give her the opportunity to tell the truth. “On Thursday morning. Where the fuck did you go?”

“The Telegraph,” she answered.

“Glenn told me that was a lunch, for which you were late,” Malcolm said. “For once in your fucking life, Nicola, tell me the truth.”

Her eyes were too bright. It was the first thing he noticed when he looked into her face. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “I’ll tell you when I know what to say.” That didn’t fucking answer anything. It only left him more uncertain. “It’s nothing _bad_ ,” she added, obviously trying to reassure him. “Well, at least, I hope it’s not. I just want to be able to tell you everything at once.”

Malcolm didn’t know what to think anymore. Was she stalling him until she thought of a story to tell him? Or was this the truth? “Why?” he asked her. “Why won’t you let me in?”

“You won’t like the answer to that one,” Nicola warned him. He glared at her, telling her without words to get the fuck on with it. “You’re fragile, Malcolm. I don’t want to burden you with something I can do myself.”

“I am _not_ fucking fragile.”

“You are. It would be so easy to break you, but you can’t see that like I can. You don’t see yourself jump out of your skin at sudden noises, or bottle everything up until you’re on the verge of exploding.”

Malcolm gazed at her with an apprehension that he hadn’t noticed take over his whole body. “I’m fine,” he said. But as he spoke, he remembered that pain that had almost broken his skull open, and the way he had found himself unable to stand in front of the Scottish Office. And the fear he would lose everything, that always took him before he could even begin to fight it. The helplessness of being Malcolm Tucker. One of the most powerful men in Westminster, powerless to control his own life.

But he was fine.

“I love you, Malcolm Tucker,” Nicola mumbled into his ear; she kissed the side of his head, so lovingly that Malcolm had to doubt every theory he had made about her that day. It was one of his moments of believing she was entirely incapable of cheating on him, with Jamie or anybody fucking else.

He turned his head. “Go to the doctor. See what they can do.”

“No, Malcolm. I need my head to be clear, for the kids.”

“It’s better they have a mother with a fuzzy head than no mother at all,” he said. “Have you been taking your medication? The antidepressants?”

“No,” she replied. “I stopped taking them when we came back from Scotland. Are you taking yours?”

“No. Stopped when we came back from Scotland.” He didn’t want to say he had stopped for the same reason she had; it would make his assertion sound a bit hypocritical.

Malcolm watched as Nicola turned around slightly, her eyes burning through him. “Don’t you think you need some help?” she asked him quietly. “I’m watching my husband break and I don’t know how to help him.”

“I’m not breaking,” he said. He was tired of saying it. “And we’re not fucking talking about me, Nicola, we’re talking about _you_. You need help. I’m not being cheeky or hurtful, but you need help. You’ve been through too much to shoulder it yourself, and you won’t tell me how you feel, for whatever fucking reason.”

“I know how much you love me,” Nicola said. “And I don’t think I could hear someone I love like that say the things that might come out of me.”

Malcolm took her hand into his. Regardless of the fact she was lying to him, he could never turn his back on her. “If you won’t go to the doctor, you need to tell me, or it’s going to kill you.”

Nicola hesitated. “I don’t want to upset you.”

“I’ll be more upset if it kills you.” He turned around to face her properly, her weight falling onto his side. “Seriously, Nic’la, I need you to fucking talk to me. I can handle knowing what you’re thinking. What I can’t fucking handle is you trying to off yourself and then refusing even to fucking look at me!”

She kissed him, and he knew she was only trying to keep him quiet; he put his hands on her arms and held her back. “You’ll hate it. And me.”

“You only keep telling yourself that so you don’t have to speak.”

Nicola started to play with Malcolm’s fingers, and he allowed it – that was how he knew she was gathering her thoughts. He watched her intently as waves of pain, sorrow and fear crossed her face, like the sea crashing into the rocks. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled. “I don’t want you to think me weak. I don’t want you to see it.”

“I’ve seen you half-dead, Nicola,” he reminded her. “I’m not gonna think you weak.”

“It’s different,” she said. “You could understand a physical injury because it’s right there in front of you. But this, Malcolm, I don’t think even I understand all of it.”

“Just try.”

She interlocked their fingers, like she was scared he might abandon her. “I feel broken,” she murmured. “I mean, I was never perfect. I always had claustrophobia and I always had the anxiety problem. But as time went on, I stopped being able to take body blows. And it beats you down, you know? I stopped believing in who I am. Christ, I don’t even know who I fucking am,” she laughed, but it was without humour. “I’m just this object that exists. Sometimes I think I spent so much time living my life around James and his mood swings that I don’t know how to live for myself anymore. So I try and live for my kids, and for you, but you all have minds of your own and you can see through it. You actually _look_ , and I’m not used to that. It scares the shit out of me. And even though I know you wouldn’t, sometimes I’m scared one day you might get sick of my shit and hurt me, like he did. I know you’re not him, but I can’t help it. I’ve seen what people can do, how they can lay their hands on the person they claim to love.”

“I will _never_ do to you what he did,” Malcolm said.

“I know. Rationally, I know that,” she assured him. “But there’s this part of me that tells me I don’t deserve a happy marriage, and that I should sabotage it before you get the chance to. If the ship’s going to sink, I have to be the captain.”

Jesus fucking Christ, what had that man done to her?

“And sometimes, when I lie next to you at night, all I can think about is that I can’t possibly deserve to have you here with me. You must be mistaken, if you think you love me. Or I close my eyes and all I can see is him, and all the things that happened on that bed. All the times I let him do whatever he wanted. And some of the things he did when he was angry,” she went on. Her voice cracked, and Malcolm could almost physically feel his heart break. “Do you remember when I first told you about the things I would do to protect the children?” she asked. “Do you remember what I stopped you saying?”

Malcolm cast his mind back and found he could remember exactly what he had started to say before she cut him off. “I was gonna tell you it amounts to rape.”

Nicola nodded, and her face screwed up in pain. “Even before he actively tried to kill me, my marriage to James was based on him doing whatever the fuck he liked to me.”

“Nicola,” Malcolm said carefully, trying to find a way to remind her of this without forcing her to throw the shutters up on him. “You know it wasn’t just the coercion of knowing the kids might get hurt if you didn’t give him a shag, don’t you? I’ve heard that recording. There’s no doubt what that was. That was rape. It was right there in black and white.” Nicola was staring at her feet, so Malcolm gently moved her head by the chin until she was looking at his face. “Have you ever accepted that?”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I was his wife.”

“And?”

“And can you really rape your wife?”

“Yes!” Malcolm exclaimed, sitting up straighter. “Marriage certificate or fucking not, when a woman asks you to stop, you fucking well stop! He was completely in the fucking wrong. Don’t you _ever_ try and justify it like that!”

He had pushed her too hard. Malcolm knew that the moment he spoke in earnest, and Nicola’s eyes welled up. “See?” she asked tearfully. “It upsets you, Malcolm.”

“Because I fucking love you, you fucking lunatic,” he laughed incredulously. He shook his head to himself; she really was something else. “Come here,” he sighed, curling his arm around her neck and holding her head to his chest. “These are the things that turn toxic when you hold them in, Nic’la,” he whispered into her ear as he rocked her gently from side to side. “This is why you need to talk to someone who knows how to help you live with it. It’s all fucking killing you, and we haven’t even got Katie’s death yet.”

Malcolm could feel his wife’s soft sobs against his chest, but he also felt her nod her head. “You’re right,” she mumbled. “Of course you’re fucking right. I’ll go. I’ll go and see someone.”

If it weren’t for the fact he was weary and stressed, Malcolm would have been triumphant that he had managed to get Nicola to agree to ask for help. But all his mind could do was focus on the fact that, for all she had told him some deep truths, she was still lying to him about where she disappeared to with Jamie and Euan, and there was no way he would manage to get that out of her. And he now had to think of everything else – about Bella, Jamie, Euan, the children, the fact he barely made it through the day without coming within inches of breaking down. That didn’t even cover his responsibility for his wife, and the pain of knowing she was so deeply troubled; hearing her talk of these things was like a stake to the heart, and he could never, ever let her know that.

He cut this head off the monster, and watched it grow bigger, uglier heads.


	12. Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can 100% blame Tereshkova for this subplot. I had left it very much alone until she started asking about things I had almost included but decided against. Looks likes I've undecided against it.

** Thursday **

The next morning passed in a whirlwind of political cock ups; though the Scottish Office (no thanks to Olly) did manage to get the relevant files sent up to Edinburgh, it had caused a huge amount of stress within the department, to the point that Laura Brown had been forced to keep Bella and Olly apart, and continued to do so today. As fucking irritating as Olly was, he wasn’t worth the scandal of being assaulted by the Scottish Secretary.

DoSAC had sent Nicola out to be interviewed on social equality, only for her to mix up her words and say, “Ethnicity and wealth doesn’t come into whether or not talented people receive university education,” when she had really meant to say, “Ethnicity and wealth shouldn’t come into whether or not talented people receive university education.” That was why Malcolm was currently standing in her office, his head pounding as his blood pressure shot sky high, bellowing at her to draft a fucking statement and correct herself before the fucking Daily Mail exploited her inability to get her words in the right fucking order.

“I’ve got to take Ella to-”

“No,” he snarled at her, inexplicably furious with her and unwilling to cut her any slack, despite knowing her head was in a horrific place. “No, _I_ will fucking take Ella to the therapist. _You_ will stay here and try and make yourself at least look like a human being in possession of her fucking frontal lobe!”

Nicola stepped around her desk and shouted, “No! I won’t let you do this to me! I need to go and get my daughter and take her to her appointment!”

Malcolm laughed at her. She sounded completely fucking demented. “I am not fucking doing _anything_ to you, you fucking delusional lunatic! But because you need to be here, _I_ will take _our_ fucking daughter to her appointment!”

“This is some sort of twisted punishment, isn’t it?” she demanded. “For looking like an idiot. For not taking your advice sooner.”

“Have you lost the fucking place?!” Malcolm shouted at her. “Are you really that fucking paranoid?” Nicola looked down at the insinuation she wasn’t right in the head, probably because she fucking knew as well as he did it was true. “You need to be here. I can do everything I need to from my phone while I wait on Ella. It’s as fucking simple as that! Get over yourself, Nic’la – not everybody is fucking out to get you! That would necessitate in someone giving enough fucks about you to put any effort into fucking you up. Which, I might add, you’re more than fucking capable of doing yourself!”

But as he went to storm out of her office, he closed the door and turned. He had ignored this sort of mistake once and had kicked himself for it ever since. “What?” asked Nicola, her tone stroppy.

“Are you okay?” he asked her. “You’re not ill with the cancer or anything again?”

“No,” she said. “No, the treatment’s working.” He didn’t quite trust the look on her face, but he couldn’t know that he wasn’t the cause of that anxious expression; after all, he had just spent the last ten minutes shouting himself hoarse at her, calling her every synonym for stupid he could think of. “Just fuck off and deal with Ella, will you?”

Malcolm let his eyes linger on his wife for a moment. She was full of resentment. But he didn’t care. She fucked up, and she had to stay here and fix it. “Get this sorted by the time I fucking get back,” he ordered her. Without another word, he stalked out of the office and ultimately out of the building, only stopping to use the lift. His head was killing him. No amount of ibuprofen or paracetamol made even the smallest dent in the pain that shot through his skull. He wished his senses would dull themselves down; the intensity of both artificial and natural light hurt his eyes, and he didn’t really want to hear every footfall that passed him, or feel his own pulse in his head.

Driving in this state was a test of observation and patience. Very much aware he wasn’t fit, he paid more attention than was probably reasonable; was this what the people who claimed they were better drivers drunk than sober experienced?

Ella, when he picked her up, didn’t question why it wasn’t her mother in the car. She just sat silently, wearing a rather scared expression. And as much as Malcolm couldn’t be fucked with her teenage dramatisation of walking into a room, he knew she wouldn’t go at all unless he put her at ease. “Look, Ella,” he said, cringing internally at how harsh his voice sounded. “It’ll be okay. You’re just going in there to talk to someone who might be able to help you. Nobody’s judging you. Anything you tell this person stays between you and them. You can tell them anything.”

“I know,” mumbled Ella. She didn’t say anything more than that until they were sitting in the waiting room. It was then that she turned to Malcolm and said, “What if I can’t do it?”

“I’ll be right here,” he promised her. “I’m just on the other side of the door if you need me. But I’m sure you can do it. You’ve proven a million times over how brave you are.”

A young man stood at the reception desk and called out, “Ella Murray?”

Ella glanced at Malcolm as she departed, still frightened; Malcolm couldn’t recall ever seeing her look more like a vulnerable child.

In the hour he spent in that waiting room, he sent several emails of varying foulness, and delivered two whispered bollockings over the phone – one to Nicola for leaving the building when she ought to have been correcting her fuck up, and one to Glenn for letting her leave the fucking building when he had explicitly asked the idiot to keep an eye on her. He then had to take a call from the Guardian and reassure them that Nicola’s health was perfectly fine, and that the pallor of her skin and the black marks under her eyes were a symptom of being a working mother to three children. He spent the entire time fighting Nicola’s fires, all the while trying not to let his own head explode.

Forty-five minutes in, Malcolm felt his vision blurring as he read from his phone screen, and had to put it in his pocket, lean back and close his eyes. He hadn’t noticed his eyes stinging until he closed them; the only reason for that he could find was tiredness. He sat like that until Ella sat down gently beside him, and he opened his eyes to look at her. “How was it?” he asked her.

“It was…” she began quietly. But she didn’t finish her sentence. She leaned into Malcolm’s chest and dropped her arm around his stomach. “Can we just sit here for a minute, Dad?”

“Of course,” he said, stroking her head as she took deep, calming breaths. “You don’t have to tell me what you talked about.” She nodded her head against his chest. “Would you be willing to do another session?” he asked her.

Ella hesitated for a moment, but replied, “Yeah. I think I could do it again.”

Once Ella had gathered herself together, they went up to the desk to make an appointment for after school the following Friday. In the car, Ella’s mood seemed to pick up. Her smile even managed to alleviate the worst of what Malcolm was feeling, until it stuck its head back beneath the water and lurked beneath the surface once more. The pain in his head softened enough for him to think clearly and keep his eyes open. But beneath Ella’s smile, Malcolm could see something had been stirred in her that upset her. She just wasn’t willing to talk about it yet. She preferred to smile. That she could smile properly at all was a step up from her solemn demeanour in recent weeks; Malcolm was sure the idea of an afternoon with Aoife was keeping her buoyant, and that if he was sending her back to school she would have been far less content.

When Malcolm stepped into the café at which he had agreed to meet Aoife, Ella at his side, she was still putting on a brave face, but he could tell whatever she had spoken about in there had shaken her. “I need to go to the bathroom,” Ella said, handing Malcolm her bag without a second thought.

He crossed the room to the table Aoife was sitting at, her earphones in as she stared into the screen of her iPod. He sat opposite her, surveying the contents of the table that she had pushed to the side out of her way. “Lunch for two, was it?” he asked her. She startled and pulled her earphones out, her hand on her chest.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” she exclaimed. “Don’t be feckin’ doin’ that to folk, Malcolm!”

“You were in your own wee world,” he smirked. “Where’s Alasdair?”

“Ah, Euan’s taken him to the cinema. Some new cartoon film I couldn’t bear to sit through,” said Aoife. “And you know Euan. He enjoys all that stuff. Thinks it’s deadly. He’s just a big kid himself, isn’t he?”

Malcolm smiled slightly, taking in her appearance. For once, Aoife was wearing make up that comprised of more than just lip balm, and though she still wore those battered old Converse, she had paired them with a navy blue summer dress. She had even gone to the effort of pulling her long black hair into a French plait. “You were on a date, weren’t you?” he accused her with a grin.

“No,” Aoife retorted, so quickly that she might as well have given him a fucking signed confession. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said quietly. Malcolm frowned. Why was a twenty-one-year-old so ashamed of going on a date?

“You’re young, Aoife,” Malcolm reminded her. “That’s what young people do – they date, get their heart broken and jump back in fucking head first.” Aoife met his eyes, and it couldn’t have been plainer that she was terrified. “You’re fucking hiding something.”

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “You won’t approve. Nobody ever fucking approves. Sure, me da would disown me. Me Nana Cissy would probably take a feckin’ heart attack. Christ only knows how Bella would react.”

Malcolm stared at Aoife. What had she got herself into? Hadn’t she learned from all the shit Nicola went through with James who was decent and who wasn’t? He had sudden visions of ex-convicts and English Defence League nutjobs, and felt a protectiveness he rarely experienced when he thought of Aoife Hannigan; she was, in her own words, ‘well able.’ Today, it appeared, Aoife wasn’t able for it at all. Whoever she was meeting up with had to be bad news, and she seemed to know it. Why else would she be so scared of the reactions from her family and her host family? “Jesus, Aoife, what’s the fucking problem?” he sighed, not sure if he really wanted to know.

Aoife leaned across the table, beckoning him to do the same. Feeling a little ridiculous, and certain that he looked it, he followed her lead. “It was a woman,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I’m gay, Malcolm.”

Malcolm let out a breath of relief. “Fucking hell, Aoife, I thought you were gonna tell me you were on a romantic date with a fucking serial killer, or a fucking right-wing extremist!” he chuckled. He knew he ought not to laugh – this seemed to be a cause of real anxiety for Aoife – but he couldn’t help it. “You’re gay, not a fucking mass murderer!”

“You don’t mind?” she asked disbelievingly. “You’re not gonna make me go home?”

“What?” he said, not quite able to comprehend what he was hearing. “Why the fuck would I send you home?”

“A lot of people wouldn’t want a lesbian mindin’ their grandchildren.”

“You didn’t see what was minding Nicola’s bairns before now,” Malcolm replied darkly. “Listen, nobody’s gonna put you on a plane to Dublin for being gay, alright?”

“But what if Bella has a problem with me?” Aoife fretted. “What if she tells the kids to stay away from me?”

“She won’t,” Malcolm said, confident that he knew his daughter well enough to at least know her stance on gay rights. “But _if_ she does, send her to me and I’ll remind her she’s spent her whole fucking life fighting prejudice, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let her be a fucking bigot herself.”

Aoife smiled, and Malcolm saw Ella returning from the toilets. He got up and said to her, “We’ll come over to Bella’s and pick you up at six, okay?”

Ella nodded her head and stepped around Malcolm to pick up her bag while Aoife gathered her belongings and left money on the table for her meals. “See you later, Dad. Love you.”

Malcolm couldn’t hold back a tiny smile as he replied. “Love you too, Ella.” She caught his hand on her way past as she headed for the door. He could see something under the surface, bubbling like a gently simmering pot; she seemed to be thinking, but not agonising.

When he turned to say goodbye to Aoife, he was almost bowled over as her tall frame collided into his with a huge force, her arms tight around him. “Thank you,” she said into his ear.

“What the fuck for?” he asked, gingerly rubbing her back while she squeezed him tight. She was saying so many things, but Malcolm couldn’t quite understand them all. He wasn’t entirely sure he would ever be able to completely understand.

“Accepting me,” she whispered. “Without question or argument.”

He put her at arms’ length with a frown, worried by just how much his acceptance meant to her. “You’re Aoife fucking Hannigan,” he told her firmly. “Gay, straight, everything in between…none of it fucking matters. And anybody who says it does doesn’t fucking matter to you, or to me. Okay? You’re a perfectly nice young woman who just happens to be gay. It doesn’t detract from who you are, or how much we trust you with the kids, and you are no less a part of this family,” he explained. He’d never thought he’d have seen the day in the twenty-first century when he would be forced to have this fucking conversation with an apparently intelligent and capable young person. “Who are you?”

“Aoife feckin’ Hannigan,” she smiled, though her voice was small and completely void of confidence. It was almost scary to see beyond the veil of cheeky self-esteem Aoife always displayed to the world. He had never thought this might be the chink in her armour; it was so easy to forget that she, in comparison to him, was practically still a kid, and that she wasn’t always going to know her own way forward. Or even that there _was_ a way forward, it seemed.

“And if you want me to be there when you tell Bella and Euan, I will be.”

The promise surprised Malcolm even more than it obviously surprised Aoife. Once upon a time he would have told her to get a fucking grip and stop tiptoeing around it. How had he got to a point where he was telling his grandchildren’s au pair that he would be with her when she came out to his daughter and son-in-law? It was a comfort, at least, that he was capable of human decency after all.


	13. A Line Crossed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, a big thanks to Tereshkova for helping out here. Fewer thanks on the subject of kittens.

“So wee Teddy McAllister’s jeerin’ he’s screevers ‘cause we’ve chored the scran oot the motor, an’ he’s mither’s even scarier than Bella’s,” Euan laughed into his beer bottle. “He’s climbed up this tree ow’er the dyke fae the camp, an’ I’m up there tae ‘cause thon kinchin aye thought he wis Action Man when he wis actually Mr. Fuckin’ Bean. Doreen – the mither – she comes roon’ the corner an’ Teddy draps aboot fowr pies on the tap o’ her. He fa’s oot the tree an’ Doreen hauls him back tae the camp by the scruff o’ the neck.”

“What did you do?” asked Ella, who had picked up a disturbing amount of Scots and cant from spending so much time around her stepsister and her family.

“Hid in the tree an’ ate the rest o’ the pies,” grinned Euan. “Doreen didnae git a deek at me, an’ I wisnae aboot tae let thon dragon kick ma chate back tae the camp.”

Bella handed Euan a plate of beef stew and admonished him, “Doreen McAllister wis aye a nice bloan, as long as ye wurnae chorin’ aff her. The problem yous had wisnae her bein’ a dragon – it wis you an’ Teddy runnin’ aboot bein’ shiftless thievin’ bastards thegither ‘til yehs took wives.”

Malcolm refused the plate of stew Bella offered him, but took the fresh beer bottle from her hand. “Eat, Dad,” she ordered him. When he ignored her, Bella turned her back and walked away, shaking her head.

“Fuck off,” he muttered under her breath as she left him. He didn’t want her running after him, or being nice to him. Every fibre of his being was exhausted and furious, and he wanted to be left alone with that.

As the day wore on, and Nicola refused to entertain any conversation with him, Malcolm’s stress and anger levels had inclined sharply. When, at six o’clock, they’d arrived with Sophie and Ben for dinner at Bella’s, Malcolm did not trust himself to speak. He couldn’t know what he was thinking from one moment to the next, and he had noticed a distinct lack of a filter between his temper and his mouth today. To remedy that, he sat drinking in silence while his family got on with their lives and his wife glared at him from across the room.

Malcolm got up and went to the kitchen. He needed something stronger than lager if he was going to tolerate this much longer. He reached over Bella’s shoulder and took a bottle of whisky out the cupboard. “Aye, that’s awfy nice of you, Dad,” she snorted.

“Give it a rest,” he said, pouring a large measure into a glass. “You’re hardly the pinnacle of good behaviour and sobriety yourself. I know exactly what you and those two arseholes of stepbrothers of yours got up to.”

“When we were fucking sixteen!” Bella argued. “Not in our fifties with four kinchins and a traumatised wife!”

Malcolm glared at her. “Wind your fucking neck in,” he snapped. “Just ‘cause Nicola goes gurnin’ to you every time we fall-”

“She didn’t,” retorted Bella. “I had to fucking drag it out of her. Which means, I hope you fucking understand, you’ve really fucking hurt her.”

Nicola appeared at the door, her face stony and resolute. “Put that glass down, Malcolm,” she said. “You’re not fit to be drinking, and well you bloody know it.”

Malcolm laughed. Was this her trying to be strict? “I’m not one of your stupid snot-nosed kids, Nic’la!” he answered back. “You’ll get no further telling me what to do than you ever get trying to string a sentence together in public!” Why was he still angry about that? She had sorted it. After a great deal of arguing and some rather grating histrionics, perhaps, but it was resolved. And yet it left him seething with her. He couldn’t shake that anger. It coursed through his veins and refused to leave his body.

“You’re fucking ridiculous. You know that, don’t you? Stumbling around Westminster without a fucking clue and then _you_ try and tell _me_ what to fucking do?!” The sight of her standing there infuriated him. The fact he could not know why only frustrated him more. “I really don’t know why I fucking bother! You, you’re fucking mental! Your kids aren’t far behind you.” Nicola stepped back from him as he advanced towards his wife. Her hands raised in front of her chest, everything about her face betrayed her shock.

“Either I’ve got Ben raging like a fucking baby rhinoceros, or Sophie refusing to speak like a fucking normal person, or Ella hiding fucking _knives_ and screaming in her fucking sleep!” he shouted. He felt Bella’s hand pull on his shirt, but shrugged her off. Every cell in his body was angry. That Nicola was standing there, hands in front of her like she actually thought he was going to thump her, only enraged him more. He was _not_ James fucking Murray. He wasn’t about to throw her down stairs or hit her over the fucking head.

“And then there’s you. Suicide seems to be the one thing you’ve actually got a fucking skill for, ‘cause if I’d not dragged you out that bath I’d be lumbered with _your_ fucking kids on my own!”

“What?!” Bella asked. “Nicola, what the fuck is he on about?!”

There was no answer to that question. Nicola was close to crying. Again. What would it take to toughen her up? She had fuck all to cry about. She was safe, and loved, and had plenty of people watching her back. Or more. He still hadn’t worked out what the fuck she was doing with Jamie.

At the door, Aoife and all five children stood with expressions of fear and shock on their faces. Malcolm couldn’t care. Bella had moved to his side, her hand on his arm as she held him back.

“And what about you, Malcolm?!” Nicola demanded, angrily wiping tears from her face, one hand still raised to defend herself.

“What about fucking me?!” He threw Bella off, leaving her glowering at him.

“You are an angry, troubled, terrifying man,” she told him earnestly. “And not just since Scotland. Half of London’s been fucking terrified of you for years! Your own sister was scared of you until you graduated university! Has it ever occurred to you that you have a fucking problem?!”

Malcolm felt the blood drain from his face. What exactly had Verity said to her? “Has it ever occurred to _you_ that you might be my fucking problem?!” he snarled at her, grabbing her by the arms. “You’re a fucking defective headcase!” Malcolm shook her hard in temper. Her body wasn’t nearly as robust as he expected it to be, but her hands pressed themselves against his chest. Was she fucking scared of him?

And suddenly it wasn’t Nicola’s face he was growling into anymore. It was Ella’s. She had run across the kitchen and stepped between them, disconnecting his grip on Nicola’s arms. “Leave her alone,” Ella said. “Get back, Malcolm, I mean it!”

Her eyes, identical to her mum’s, shone with rage equal to his own. “Haven’t you fucking learned about playing fucking Wonder Woman, you stupid, moronic girl?!” he bellowed in her face. “Three times you’ve done it, and three times someone’s got in fucking bother!”

Ella drew back her hand and slapped him hard across the face. “Don’t you fucking _dare_ ,” she hissed at him. Malcolm stopped, shocked that a fourteen-year-old girl had been the one to come a slap off him.

“Language, Ella,” Nicola berated her. Malcolm lifted his stare from Ella to Nicola – she just couldn’t fucking help herself, could she?

She pushed Ella aside, out of harm’s way, and said to Malcolm, “Get in the fucking car. Now.”

The air crashed around Malcolm, like he was standing under the propeller of a helicopter. Bella stood between him and Nicola now, her teeth bared – and it wasn’t a smile. “Go,” she told him.

“Fuck this!” he shouted, following Nicola to the car. He sat down in the passenger seat and stared straight in front of him. He didn’t want to look at Nicola, for he was both angry with her and a little afraid of losing her.

She got into the car next to him, sitting in the driver’s seat. “Where the fucking hell did that come from?” she seethed. Malcolm couldn’t give an answer. In honesty, he didn’t know where it had come from. It really hadn’t come from any one place. “It was _cruel_.”

Malcolm laughed bitterly. “How long have you known me, Nic’la?” he said. “You know I’m cruel.”

“Not like that. You wouldn’t say those things if you were healthy.” Malcolm shook his head. Why was she so determined to exonerate him? “Don’t shake your head at me. I know my husband.”

“You thought you fucking knew the first one too,” Malcolm spat. “Look how that ended.”

“I did know him,” Nicola replied. “That’s why I was fucking terrified of him for the better part of twenty years, and it’s why I spent my life protecting my children from him. But I won’t spend my life protecting them from you, too, and I will not have them trying to protect me, either. Katie died doing that, even if she wasn’t who he set out to kill. If what happened back there is what’s going to be normal from now on, Malcolm, I want a divorce.”

He said nothing. He held complete silence as Aoife and Euan got the kids into the car and Nicola drove home. The radio broke the silence that even the children did not shatter; when Malcolm looked in the mirror at them, they all seemed to be frightened. It was possibly the most uncomfortable car journey Malcolm had ever taken – even worse than those journeys to and from Dundee.

When they reached the house, Malcolm unlocked the door and, before Nicola got the chance to say or do anything, announced, “I’m away for a shower.” She didn’t stop him, and soon he was standing under almost scalding hot water; Nicola, for whatever reason, liked her showers hot enough to fucking melt human flesh off the bone. Malcolm didn’t change the temperature. The pain and discomfort were strangely cathartic.

Beyond the running water, he was sure he heard someone in his and Nicola’s bedroom. Or maybe it was one of the kids thumping about in their own room. Whichever it was, by the time Malcolm got out the shower, the bedroom was empty. Getting dressed, he noticed he had lost weight. It was much easier to feel his ribs than he remembered, and his collar bone was protruding farther than he’d ever known it to. He didn’t understand why; he was eating no less than usual. Except lunch. He rarely took lunch. Or breakfast.

He heard the front door open and close, and wondered who had left the house.

Dressed and presentable, he went downstairs to find out, only to find Victoria standing in the hallway. “Malcolm,” she said. “I think we need to talk, don’t you?” Malcolm glanced at Nicola, who glared back at him. Why was she involving her mother in this?

Victoria led them to the kitchen and closed the door, presumably so that the children would not hear. On the floor next to the breakfast table sat a holdall, and it dawned on Malcolm there and then what was going on. “Do you always have to fucking overreact, Nicola?” he groaned, sitting down on one of the stools. She was so melodramatic that Malcolm often thought she could run her own soap opera.

“You frightened the children,” Victoria said harshly. “And you laid your hands on Nicola. You are not staying under the same roof as them – at least not for tonight.”

Malcolm scowled. “This is fucking ridiculous. I didn’t fucking hurt anybody!”

“Malcolm, Ella was scared enough that you’d hurt me that she stood between us,” Nicola reminded him. “There’s a line, and you’ve just fucking pole vaulted over it. I know you can’t be alone, so Mum’s said you can stay with her.”

“And we are going to have a serious fucking conversation,” Victoria added, her tone stern. “And we are going to call your sister.”

“What?!”

“She said at New Year that if you get out of control we have to call and make you speak to her,” Nicola said. “And today has earned you the label ‘out of control’, Malcolm. It can’t continue. One minute you’re brilliant – you’re helpful, supportive, a good dad, a good husband – and the next you’re this fucking angry _monster_. It’s like the fucking demons take over. And I’m with Bella on this one. I won’t just sit and take it because I’m your wife, and I won’t force the children to witness it.”

Malcolm wasn’t in the humour for a fight anymore. He had spent all his energy. Rather than argue, he picked up the holdall and went to the front door. When he dared look through into the living room, all three children were staring at him, their expressions confused and scared. There was nothing he could say to them, so he walked out the door.


	14. The Clydebank Blitz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> It's been a fun couple of weeks (heavy sarcasm) but it's calming down (more heavy sarcasm) and it's all going to be fine (really fucking heavy sarcasm accompanied by shrill deranged laugh).
> 
> Welcome to the beginning of the intervention.

Victoria’s living room was suddenly the most intimidating place on Earth. If he were a smarter man, Malcolm would have spilled his guts in the car, when his mother-in-law was concentrating more on driving than she was on him; as it was, he had left it until he was sitting on her sofa and she was through in the kitchen making tea.

Now that he was calmer – even if only because he was shocked into it – Malcolm could see he had let this go too far. He should never have done that to Nicola, or outed her suicide attempt to the whole family, and he owed Ella a whole fucking world of apologies. But it was not in his nature to apologise even, or perhaps most especially, when he knew he was wrong. That was one of his greatest failings. His life would be so much fucking simpler if he was capable of splitting his soul open for his wife to see.

“You,” Victoria said harshly, “are completely out of order, boy. How _dare_ you put your hands on Nicola?! Of all the fucking idiotic things to do, Malcolm Tucker, I never thought you’d do that! Fucking hell, I knew you had a temper. Nicola told me you had a certain way with words. Fuck knows why but it’s one of the things she secretly loves about you. But when you start frightening my daughter and my grandchildren, you’ve gone too fucking far. If I didn’t know Nicola loves you too much to listen, I’d be telling her to divorce you!”

Malcolm picked up the mug of tea Victoria had placed on the table, just for something to hold. It was exhausting, being this angry. It sucked the life out of his soul and the spark out of his heart. There was very little he could say to defend himself when it came to Victoria, but he tried anyway. “Sometimes I can’t help but want to shake some sense into Nicola. Do you know how fucking hard it is to get through to her?!”

“I fucking raised her!” Victoria half-laughed incredulously. “Do you think she was any easier to deal with as a child, when her father had to carry her kicking and screaming into the car for school every morning? Or as a teenager, when she was so riddled with anxiety she wouldn’t come out of her bedroom for hell nor high water?! You married her – you vowed to protect her and love her, not scare her half to death! Don’t you think she had fucking enough of that with James fucking cracking her head with the boot of the car, or locking her in the fucking back room?!” She sat on the coffee table and looked him dead in the eyes. “You made a promise to Nicola, and if you feel like you can’t honour it, now is the time to walk the fuck away, before you _really_ hurt her.”

“I can honour it,” Malcolm replied quickly. He didn’t question it. “She’s my _wife_.”

“And she’s _my_ daughter,” Victoria shot back at him, “and you’re doing a fucking excellent impression of a man who isn’t capable of being a good husband.”

“I want to be a good husband,” he said.

“And yet you stood in your daughter’s kitchen and shook Nicola, and told everyone she tried to kill herself. Great work, kid.”

“I know, alright?” snapped Malcolm. “I fucking know, so get off my back, would you?!”

But Victoria slammed her mug down onto the table. “No,” she said. “No, you don’t get to fucking to do that. You do _not_ get to verbally abuse my fucking child and then tell me to get off your back!” Malcolm opened his mouth to argue, mostly out of habit and instinct, but he didn’t get the chance. “If you think you’ll get to do to her what fucking James did to her, you can think again. I won’t let that happen. Not again. Not when she’s finally letting me in.”

“Will you fucking relax? I’m not gonna turn out like James fucking Murray.”

She got back to her feet, her hands on the top of her head as she paced her own living room. Was she frustrated? “How the fuck can I trust that, Malcolm?” she snarled. He couldn’t recall seeing her face ever contort into that expression. In amongst the anger directed at him and James, he could have sworn he could see guilt and pain. “Twenty years with James and she never said a single fucking word to me, and yet now she’s asking me to intervene? What exactly have you got it in you to do if she’s asking for help now after twenty years at the mercy of James Murray?!”

“She’s doing that for me,” Malcolm sighed. “She needs to know I’m somewhere I can’t do anything fucking moronic. I don’t think that’s as much about what she thinks I might do to her as it is about what she thinks I might fucking do to myself. She’s fucking convinced I’ve got some mental issue.”

“She’s fucking right but we’ll get to that later,” Victoria retorted. Malcolm glared at her. “You cannot do things like that. Just because you’ve got a vile temper on you, that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of controlling yourself. For all your many faults, you are _not_ a stupid man. You know everything she’s been through and still you stood there and wilfully tore her down!”

Malcolm stood up and finally bellowed, “I know!” She stopped pacing and stared across the room at him. “I fucking know, Victoria, and I regret it. I shouldn’t have shouted at her, or raised my hands, or let everybody hear that she tried to kill herself! And what I said to Ella was unforgivable! I fucking know!”

“And do you know, Malcolm, Ella _will_ forgive you. Because Nicola has raised her to be kind to people who are not. Do not mistake kindness for an inherent trait; it’s a learned behaviour. People learn to be kind because they know the world isn’t. Don’t exploit it, or she’ll end up just like you.”

He put his hands over his face. The anger had not left him – it still bubbled beneath the surface – but he could see everything at risk when it spilled over. His wife, his kids, his grandchildren…they deserved better than this. Better than him. Or this version of him. He cast his mind back to when he had first grown close to Nicola, how he had been able to keep her safe. He had been able to be kind. In fact, she had taught him to be kind. Bella had taught him to be kind, even before he knew who she was. And those children, those three kids who survived grief and trauma and living with James Murray, they taught him the strength there was in being kind. How could he have allowed himself to lose that?

Victoria sat down on the sofa, next to the spot from which he had just risen. “Call your sister,” she ordered him wearily. “And put it on loudspeaker, so I know you’re not fobbing her off. Tell her the truth.”

“It’s fine. We don’t need to disturb-”

“Do as you’re told,” snapped Victoria.

Malcolm sat down and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He dialled Verity’s number, pressed the loudspeaker button and set the phone down on the table. After four rings, Verity’s voice answered, “Aye, Malcolm. What’s up?”

“Hey, Verity. You’re on loudspeaker. I’m at Victoria’s.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, what have you done now?!” she asked hotly. “I’m over at Mum’s by the way.” He could hear Annie in the distance, asking what was wrong. “I don’t know yet, Ma.”

Malcolm sighed and crossed his arms over his stomach as he leaned forwards a little. “Nicola’s chucked me out.”

“What did you do?”

“Why are you assuming it’s my fault?!”

“A lifetime of experience.”

Out the corner of his eye, he caught Victoria smirk, and turned briefly to glower at her. “I was a… a bit harsh with her, and then I shouted some pretty shitty things at Ella. And she kicked me out to her mother’s spare room.”

“Fucking idiot,” grumbled Verity. “What did I tell you at New Year? I fucking told you to call me if you thought you were going downhill. Especially after what happened in March! Fuck’s sake, man! I love you, Malcolm, but sometimes you’re a right fucking cunt!”

“Verity!” he heard Annie scold her daughter loudly. “Don’t speak to your brother like that!”

“Mum, his wife’s thrown him out for being an arsehole,” she replied. “He _is_ being a fucking cunt!” Verity returned her attention to Malcolm. “This is exactly how it started when you were sixteen. You started getting angry with the wrong people. You need _help_. You’re hurting everybody you love by refusing it, or being half-assed about it when you do go and get it. And I know you love them, so don’t you dare downplay that!”

Malcolm could hear Annie speak, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. “I’m gonna put you on speaker. Mum wants to speak to you. Be nice, right?”

“Aye,” he sighed. He didn’t really want a bollocking from Annie Tucker, but it was long overdue if the other two’s opinions were correct.

“Malcolm,” Annie said. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her sound so old or weary; it took him by surprise. “Nicola booted yer arse?”

He let out a short, humourless bark of a laugh. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Right. Well. You need the doctor.”

“I don’t-”

“You’ve got post-traumatic stress.”

“I don’t-” he tried to say again, but Annie was having none of it.

“I spent twenty years married to a man with post-traumatic stress, Malcolm, and I will _not_ let you succumb to it like he did,” Annie said brutally. Malcolm didn’t know what to say. Was she telling him there was a tangible reason for what his father did? “Your dad was a very angry, broken man. It was the war that killed him. It took thirty-odd years, but it killed him. I don’t want the same sort of torture for you.”

“What the hell are you on about?” snapped Malcolm. How could the war have killed his father? The man would only have been about seven when the war started.

He heard Annie’s sigh crackle over the phoneline. “He was eight years older than me. You know that – it was the butt of every joke my sister ever made. But he was still just a wean during the war. Your grandad was a shipbuilder in Clydebank. Wasn’t allowed to join the army because they needed him here, building ships. When your father was nine, the Germans spent two nights bombing Clydebank into oblivion. His street took a real hit. They didn’t have a shelter; they hid under beds and tables. Your dad was the second oldest of five. Three brothers – the youngest two were twins – and a baby sister.”

Malcolm felt the blood drain from his face. He studied the Clydebank Blitz at school. There were only seven houses in the whole town left unscathed. He had never known his own father had been caught up in that.

“He was the only survivor. He watched his father and his older brother die. The only thing that saved him was the fact his mother sent him to the kitchen to get a bottle for the baby – he got under the kitchen table and it was sturdy enough to shield him from the blast. When he got out from under the rubble his mother and the younger weans were stone dead.”

He didn’t want to hear any more, but was oddly compelled to know exactly what had driven his dad to suicide, not to mention what had really happened to his grandparents. Never had it occurred to him that they could have been victims of the Clydebank Blitz.

“They said the shockwaves of the blast killed the youngest weans, and your grandmother was killed by a blow to the head. Your grandfather died of a collapsed lung and your uncle had his abdomen totally bloody crushed. He was brought up by his Auntie Isla. They used country mansions as schools for evacuated kids, and she got a job in one of them for the rest of the war; he was fucking lucky not to end up in an orphanage. But he was never right. They didn’t have a real name for it then but now they call it-”

“PTSD,” Malcolm finished for her. “Dad told you all this?”

“Aye. He had to, he had that many nightmares.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because I knew he wanted to keep his children and the war totally separate. He didn’t want you and Verity to have to think about such incredibly awful things. He _hated_ war. Always said war is just the mass killing before the leaders realise they’re gonnae have to speak to each other. It’s one thing to learn about it in the school – it’s another to know half your family was wiped out by Hitler before they even got to live.”

“But you always told us he lived with Isla because his dad died in the army and his mum died of TB. Never said a fucking word about having brothers and a sister!”

“That was your dad’s decision. That was easier for him to say than explaining how the Germans obliterated his whole family. It was sheer luck Isla had moved to the country with her weans after her man was conscripted. He died in France. But your dad and his cousins got a relatively peaceful time of it up north after that. They moved back to Glasgow when the war ended.”

“Jesus, Mum,” Malcolm breathed. How could she have gone all this time without telling him any of this?

“And you, my darling, you’re so like your dad. Even without the trauma, you were always just like him in nature. That’s why you need to get seen to. Your dad made a lot of mistakes because he couldn’t understand he was ill. He drank too much, shouted too much and didn’t talk enough. I always think if he’d been ill now he wouldn’t have died, because there’s more help for people who need it. And you need it, Malcolm. You did to Nicola exactly what your dad used to do to me when he couldn’t handle being alive. He always regretted it afterwards, and that just made everything so much worse for him. He couldn’t be the man he wanted to be because he wouldn’t let anybody help him be that man.”

In the background of the phone call, Malcolm could hear Verity sniff, and could tell she was crying. He knew his sister had never been told any of this, either. It was all Malcolm could do to refrain from anger or sorrow where his mother and mother-in-law would surely sense it. “Am I really like him?” he asked quietly.

“You always were your father in miniature, Malcolm,” Annie told him. “It’s only now that you’ve went the same way as him that I’m worried about it.”

He looked around at Victoria, whose face was haunted. She was slightly younger than his parents and so wouldn’t have endured the war, but the effect it seemed to have on her wasn’t lessened by that fact. He regretted letting her insist on him putting the phone on speaker; it had only upset her. “Please, go and get help,” Verity implored him tearfully. “I don’t want to lose my brother. In any sense.”

Malcolm pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ignore the headache he could feel coming on. “I’ll try,” he finally said. “I’ll try and do something. I won’t end up like Dad.”

“Don’t promise that,” Annie said. “Just promise me you’ll do something to _try_ and not to end up like Dad.”

“I promise.”

“Right,” said Annie, with an air of finality. “You go and get some rest. And don’t drink.”

“Like Victoria’s gonna let me drink,” Malcolm reminded her, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “Love you, Mum. You, too, Verity.”

“Love you,” they chorused.

Malcolm ended the call and put his head in his hands. “Are you okay?” Victoria asked carefully. When he looked up, he could see she was still furious with him, but she could see the effect learning these things had on him.

He got to his feet. “I’m fine,” he lied. “I’m gonna go to bed, if that’s okay? If you’re finished shouting at me?”

Victoria raised an eyebrow at him but said, “On you go. Get some sleep. We can talk more tomorrow.”

Malcolm nodded curtly and headed up the stairs to the spare room, where he got into bed without even changing his clothes. All he wanted was to sleep, and preferably to never wake up, for this would all still be here in the morning and he had no idea how to do what they asked of him. Verity was right – he resisted help and manipulated it when he did take it, so that he didn’t actually have to talk about anything particularly painful. But if he wanted to keep his wife and family – and he needed to keep them – he was going to have to deal with this.

After all, if this was what caused his father’s death, he could not let that happen. He couldn’t force Nicola and the children to go through what he, Verity and Annie went through. That was just passing the pain down to another generation, and that generation already felt more than enough pain as it was. It was his responsibility to look after Nicola, as it was to look after Bella and the children, but he couldn’t do that without taking responsibility for himself.

It just so happened that was the most terrifying prospect on the planet.


	15. A Time to Rise and a Time to Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the cold, I'm stuck at my mother's and apparently we have three or four days of weather warnings for snow ahead of us. I love my life.

“ _Of all the comrades that e’er I had_ ,” sang Malcolm, “ _they are sorry for my going away; and all the sweethearts that e’er I had, they’d wish me one more day to stay_.” He was mid-song, only at the second verse, and already there was a hard lump in his throat.

He looked down. Nicola’s hand was in his. He didn’t even need to look up to see her face – he knew that was his wife standing next to him. “ _But since it fell unto my lot that I should rise and you should not; I’ll gently rise and softly call, goodnight and joy be to you all_.”

When he did look up, she was crying; this was a funeral. They were in a church. Sophie, Ella and Ben stood around them. “ _So fill to me the parting glass, and drink a health whate’er befalls; and gently rise and softly call, goodnight and joy be to you all_.”

Instinctively, he looked up to try and find James Murray. It was down to Malcolm to protect Nicola. But he was not here. The bagpipes started, and Malcolm searched around him once more. This was not Katie Murray’s funeral. This was not the right building – it wasn’t even a London church. It was, Malcolm realised with a sickened jolt, a Glasgow kirk.

He saw Annie at the other end of the pew. She was younger, like he remembered her from when he was only a child. Verity stood at her side, tiny in her young age. Next to him, Nicola squeezed his hand and frowned through her quiet tears; it wasn’t anything more than the fact it was a funeral making her cry. But why was she looking at him like that? Like she expected him to break?

He leaned down and whispered into her ear, “You need to promise me something.” He didn’t know if she would hear him over the bagpiper, but by some miracle, she seemed to have caught what he said.

“Of course,” she replied.

“That you’ll never, ever stop loving me, no matter what,” he said. “Please, promise me.” Why was he saying that? _How_ was he saying that?

“Malcolm, why would I _ever_ stop loving you?”

“Because one day I might turn out like him.”

“ _A man may drink and not be drunk; a man may fight and not be slain; a man may court a pretty girl; and perhaps be welcomed back again_ ,” he was compelled to sing, though not because he wanted to.

In his hand was a folded sheet of paper, on that paper was the name of the man whose funeral this was: Alexander Tucker. “ _But since it has so ordered been by a time to rise and a time to fall; fill to me the parting glass; goodnight and joy be to you all_.” Nicola’s arm wrapped itself around his waist. How could he be married while burying his father? “ _But since it fell unto my lot that I should rise and you should not; I’ll gently rise and softly call, goodnight and joy be to you all_.”

Malcolm felt a child cling to him – Sophie, he thought – and looked back over at his sister. How was she so small, standing with her hand in Annie’s?

“ _So fill to me the parting glass, and drink a health whate’er befalls; and gently rise and softly call, goodnight and joy be to you all…goodnight and joy be with you all_.”

He wondered what it was he was supposed to do next. Nothing was as it was meant to be. He could not possibly move along to Annie and Verity; indeed, he wasn’t even sure why he was not with them right now, or why his wife was here.

The world crashed. The ground shook. And suddenly everyone apart from him was taking cover under the kirk pews. As the roof fell, Malcolm stood and watched it. Somehow, nothing hit him. But his family – all of them – were buried under mounds of debris. He didn’t think twice about trying to claw through it, until he saw an arm sheltering a small body, and a dusty and bloodied hand lifeless against a fallen beam. He shouted names – Nicola, Ella, Sophie, Ben, Verity, Mum – but nobody stirred. Nobody answered him.

But he had to shout for them.

A strong pair of arms tightened across his chest, wrestling him back from the debris. “It’s no use, son,” a familiar voice roared in his ear. He turned around, forcing himself out of the man’s grip, and stared at his father. He was not as he was in life. He was the way Malcolm had found him in that shed – pale, cold, with a bullet wound and strangled neck. “Malcolm!” Alexander shouted, as Malcolm stepped backwards. It was the most terrifying thing, to see a corpse talk. “Malcolm, no!”

Alexander reached out his hand, but Malcolm only stepped back further. “You’re dead,” he accused. “They’re not.”

“They are.” Alexander stepped forward. “They’re gone. They’re gone because of you.”

“Because of me?”

“Because of you.” Malcolm froze, but Alexander did not stop his advance.

A young woman appeared behind Alexander. “Because of you,” she said. Malcolm knew those bright blue eyes – exactly like Alexander’s – and that wild, untamed hair. “Where were you? Where were you when I needed you?”

“Bella, I didn’t _know_.”

But that didn’t seem to be good enough for her, and she stood next to Alexander as he drew to a halt in front of Malcolm. “You should’ve known.” She looked beyond Malcolm, to the devastation behind him. “You should’ve known what was coming. You should’ve saved them.”

“Malcolm!” another voice shouted.

“Because of you,” Bella said. “Because of you.”

“Malcolm!”

Hands held him by the wrists. The light was bright in his eyes – and he suddenly recognised the smell of a home. “Malcolm, calm down!” His heart was racing, cold sweat running down his face and back. He needed to go and find Nicola. The children. Verity and Annie. He had to dig them out, dead or alive.

And yet those hands did not release him. “Malcolm!” This time he held his head still, fighting only with his hands, and saw his mother-in-law’s face inches from his. “Malcolm, you’re alright,” Victoria assured him. “You’re safe.”

“Nicola,” he managed to convey.

“She’s fine. She’s at home with the children.” He forced himself to stop fighting out, to stop his arms from flailing. “Everyone is alright.”

There was no forgetting that hand – Nicola’s hand – lying still against the fallen debris, or the arm that tried to shield a child’s body, or the way the Earth moved as it seemed to end. And that face, that corpse’s face, the only way he could remember his own father. Victoria gently pulled Malcolm forward and held his head to her shoulder. “It wasn’t real,” she whispered. “Whatever it was, whatever did this to you, it wasn’t real. Your wife and kids are safe, Malcolm.”

* * *

 

** Friday **

The day came in swathes of blinding sunshine. It kept Malcolm awake, if nothing else; he hadn’t really slept after waking up from that nightmare. He would never admit it, but the prospect of ending up there again scared him too much to let him sleep. So when he went to DoSAC to check on Nicola, he was exhausted, wound up and fragile. He still could not wipe from his mind the idea that he could lose her so easily. Knowing what had happened to one side of his family in 1941 didn’t help him keep calm either – it added to his hatred for loud noise and sudden movements.

He had left it until after lunch so Nicola had time to gather herself. She wasn’t okay. Malcolm knew that. He had always known it.

When he walked into the department, he was surprised to find Jamie there. Even more surprised to see him through the glass walls of Nicola’s office, as she changed out of her heels and into her trainers.

Nicola was happy. Almost deliriously so. Happier than she had been in Malcolm’s company at any point since March. He hadn’t seen her smile like that in so long. How could she be so happy just days after trying to commit suicide? Was it that she was with Jamie? Or just that she wasn’t with Malcolm? He loved that smile, he realised, and he so rarely got to see it.

She threw her arms around Jamie, who hugged her tight. Malcolm couldn’t make out what he was saying, but even the uncertainty did nothing to stifle the anger rising in him like acid. He didn’t think about what he was doing. He just _did_. Suddenly he was in Nicola’s office, bellowing at Jamie to take his hands off Nicola. “Will you calm the fuck down, man?!” shouted Jamie. “Just let us explain-”

Malcolm silenced him with his hands on his shirt, throwing him away from Nicola. Jamie fell against a filing cabinet, his face hitting edge of it before he was able to stand himself up. Malcolm took that opportunity to punch him hard about the mouth; when he drew back for a second time, Olly was suddenly between them, and it was his nose Malcolm felt his fist connect with.

Someone grabbed him from behind, and control of what he was doing completely left Malcolm. He didn’t even look to see whose hands tried to restrain him, although they belonged to more than one person. Somebody was thrown backwards as he lashed out. He could vaguely hear a body hit the floor. Where did he get that kind of strength from?

In the main office, a woman shouted across the room, “Your father’s just started a riot!”

Jamie was on his feet again, and Malcolm wanted nothing more than to see him black and blue. If he had to lose his wife, it wasn’t going to be to Jamie. Of all the things that could come between Malcolm and Nicola, it was _not_ going to be another man. Malcolm lunged forwards but Olly put himself between them, struggling singlehandedly until Nicola’s hands tried to wrestle Malcolm back. He hit out wildly, the back of his hand colliding with a face.

The tiny frame of Bella Whyte appeared in front of him, her hands raised against his chest. “Dad, stop!” commanded Bella. “Stop this!”

Malcolm tried to cast her aside, and thought he would manage it with ease, given that he was a foot taller than her. But she caught his arm and put it behind his back, and pushed him firmly by the hip until his legs gave way and he fell to the floor, his head and face hitting the carpet hard. He struggled against Bella’s weight but she held him down. “Give over, Dad!” she said. “Nicola, will you help me?!”

He felt the familiar pressure of Nicola’s hands on his shoulder blades, pushing him down into the floor. “Malcolm, calm down,” she said soothingly. She wasn’t angry. Why wasn’t she angry? She stroked his head, her fingers gentle and careful in his hair. “Nothing bad has happened. You’re ill, that’s all. Christ, if you wanted the proof, here it is.”

Malcolm caught a conversation going on across the room. “…was telling me what the doctor said and he came in here and went fucking ballistic!” Jamie was explaining.

“Okay, okay,” Glenn said. “You calm down, too, Jamie. Malcolm’s not well.”

“I know,” Jamie grumbled. “I fucking know. He wouldn’t have fucking done that if he was fine. He’s not been right since he got shot. I fucking know that.”

Nicola’s fingers caressed the back of Malcolm’s neck, and she said quietly, “If you sit up, Malcolm, you can’t get back up and lash out again, alright? We don’t want anyone else hurt.” With that, Nicola and Bella helped Malcolm up into a chair, while he tried to figure out what had just happened. What had he just done?

He tried to remember, but he just couldn’t account for the mess of the people in front of him. There was no way he had the physical strength to cause that, never mind the lack of control. But he was the one who ended up being held down by his daughter and his wife. It was him that his colleagues had been trying to restrain. So he must have lost control. Somewhere, his self-control had abandoned him, and he had done this.

That wasn’t him. He was not this man. This man was everything Malcolm did not want to be.

Terri entered the room now that Malcolm had sat down, wide-eyed and offering first aid. “I’ll come with you and get an ice pack,” Bella said.

Nicola leaned on the edge of her desk and took Malcolm by the hand. Why wasn’t she shouting abuse at him for this? He deserved it. If he was the reason all these people were injured, then he deserved anything she might say or do. But she didn’t hurl anything at him. She simply held his hand.


	16. Baby Steps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 4.30am! I can't sleep! It's windy as fuck! Our weather warnings seem to be perpetually extending! It's great, this is. I even had to bollock my brother for using the A90 after the police outright saying to keep off that fucking road. Idiot.

“Bide at peace, Dad!” Bella ordered sternly, pressing an ice pack to the corner of his forehead and over his cheekbone. Her hand was firm as she held him still, until he took over control of the ice pack.

Malcolm watched the scene around him, disconnected from it and from himself. Nicola was wiping Jamie’s lip and checking his eye, the skin around which was already coming up bruised, ignoring the bruise coming up on her own jaw. Glenn was circling his shoulder, like he had sprained it, while Terri cleaned up Olly’s nose as he held its bridge to stem the bleeding. Malcolm looked up at Bella, whose bright blue eyes tore through him. She was the only one uninjured. Who knew a Traveller’s ability for fighting would come in handy in the British Government?

Though her stare was intense, Malcolm was surprised to find no anger at all there. “What happened?” she asked. Her voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “It’s like an Arbroath pub on a Saturday night round here!”

“Remind me to have words with your fucking mother about letting you go to the pubs in Arbroath when you were a kid,” Malcolm retorted darkly.

“Like she knew about it,” snorted Bella. “And stop avoiding the question.”

Malcolm looked down at the floor. He didn’t know what happened. It was a total blur. He vaguely recalled his fist hitting Jamie’s face, and Olly trying to get between them. It occurred to Malcolm that Olly would only have stepped in and risked his own safety if he thought Jamie was in very real danger. “I don’t know,” he murmured honestly. “I fucking can’t remember.” But as he said it, he found a memory of hands trying to hold him back, and that he had lashed out backwards at them. He could remember Bella appearing from nowhere twisting his arm behind his back, and the weight of more than one person holding him down.

It came in snippets, in flashes of vision and fright that he couldn’t put all the pieces together. He got unsteadily to his feet. “Ca-canny, Dad,” Bella warned him. “You’ve had a knock to the-”

“I’m fine,” he interrupted her. “Nicola, sit down,” he said, carefully and gently placing his ice pack against Nicola’s jaw. It was a massive relief when she showed him no fear, and rested her hand over his. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” Nicola replied. “I know. But Malcolm…do you see now that you’re ill?”

Malcolm met her eyes, and recalled what Jamie had said about a doctor. “Are _you_ ill again?” he asked her, guiding her into the chair he had just vacated. “Jamie was on about something the doctor said.”

Nicola sighed. “I was going to tell you,” she said. “But every time there was an appointment, you were already so anxious, and Euan and Jamie have both been taking me into the hospital for scans. Less conspicuous than a government car, and I don’t like driving after being in those fucking machines. That was where Jamie took me today; he was just dropping me off when you decided to jump him.” This time it was Malcolm who leaned against Nicola’s desk, looking down at her with a sense of panic – what if her health had crashed again, and he hadn’t noticed? “The doctor said there’s no sign of the cancer. They’ll have to keep an eye on it, obviously, but it seems like the surgery and chemo might just have done the job. For now, anyway.”

The relief, if not for the weight of everything else, should have been sheer joy. “Come here,” he said to her. She got to her feet and put the ice pack down on her desk. Malcolm put his arms around her and held her close. The fact that their marriage was at breaking point didn’t seem to matter in this moment, but he still could not run from the fact that it was. “I love you,” he said to her, barely a mumble into her ear.

“I love you,” she replied, her voice muffled by his chest. “But we’ve got some things we need to sort out.”

“I know,” he said.

Nicola stepped back and said, “Jamie, Terri, Olly, Glenn, could you give me a moment with Malcolm and Bella, please?”

Malcolm looked up at the four who weren’t his family. At some stage he was going to have to apologise because, even by his standards, he had crossed a fucking line. Terri closed the door behind the men. Bella looked up at Malcolm and Nicola. “I can’t keep up anymore,” she said. “I can’t take how volatile this family is anymore. I’m a bawhair off packing the motor and taking my man and my kinchins back up the road.”

He went to argue with her, but Nicola spoke first. “Please don’t do that, Bella,” she said gently. “We need to sort this out together, as a family.” Bella didn’t say anything more, but Malcolm saw now the weariness in her face. Nicola turned to Malcolm. “My mum told me about last night,” she said. “She told me about Clydebank, and about your nightmares.”

“So much for the ‘not my place’ line she always comes away with,” he muttered darkly.

“She bypassed that because she’s worried about you. But she said you need to come home. That you can’t cope with not being with me and the children, and you know you were wrong to treat us the way you did.” Malcolm raised his eyebrows in surprise. That was _not_ the opinion he had expected Victoria to take, after all her fucking cursing and shouting at him last night.

“Clydebank?” Bella said suddenly. “The only things I know Clydebank for are ships and the Blitz.”

“Annie finally told your dad why your grandfather killed himself,” Nicola said. “His parents, brothers and sister all died in the Clydebank Blitz, and your grandad couldn’t live with it.”

Bella sat down in an empty chair. “It’s been a while since I’ve wanted to fucking wring Hitler’s neck,” she murmured. Malcolm frowned at her, until she said, “Try being a bairn sharing a bender camp with a shell-shocked soldier. Charlie was the youngest of his lot. The three oldest brothers went away to the continent to fight. When I was wee, Neil, the oldest of Grandad’s brothers, he camped with us for a couple of years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger mess of a man. Drank himself to death in the end.”

It was another moment of regret for Malcolm, as he was reminded he was never there for his daughter when she was young. But he put that to one side; that was one failing for which he would have to atone another day.

“Where do we go from here?” Malcolm asked.

“Well, Mum thinks it’s best for your mental health if you come home,” Nicola replied. He could hear the caution in her voice. “But Malcolm, that means you’ve got to keep your head. No more shouting at me and the kids, because we can’t handle it. We’re as jumpy as you are. And fucking apologise to Ella. She was so upset she couldn’t go to school this morning.”

“What?” Malcolm asked. Fuck. What damage had he done?

“Aoife’s got her,” Bella said. “Euan’s away to Skye sorting out a monumental fuck up with the linen suppliers, so it’s just Aoife, Alasdair and Ella at home.”

He could have slapped himself. How could he have let himself do that to Ella? “I think you need to take the rest of the day off,” said Nicola. “Get yourself together, calm down, and stop diving around at a million miles a minute. We can have a real conversation about it all tonight.” Malcolm looked down at the floor at the thought of that; he didn’t think he was capable of saying the things he had to say in order to save his relationships with his wife and children.

Bella got to her feet, though she was still a foot smaller than he was. “Go to mine. Sit with Aoife and Ella. If nothing else, sharing a room with Aoife might cheer you up. Don’t think I’ve ever seen her grin so much, and that’s _after_ your wee display last night.”

Malcolm thought he knew where Aoife’s newfound perpetual grin might have come from, but knew Aoife probably hadn’t said a word to Bella yet. “I can’t,” he sighed. “Somebody’s got to keep an eye on Tom. He’s like a box of fucking fireworks packed to the fucking gunnels with shit, and every human interaction is a fucking naked flame.”

Bella went to the door and called, “Jamie, ‘mere a minute!” Jamie walked into the room, no longer with his face covered in blood, though it had dripped onto his collar. “You can keep an eye on the Prime Minister if Dad takes the rest of the day off, can’t you?”

Jamie sighed and said, “Aye. ‘Course I can.” Malcolm stared at his bruised face as he turned to Nicola and said, “Don’t suppose you’ve got any painkillers fucking kicking about, have you?” Nicola went to the top drawer of her desk and took out a box of Nurofen, and tossed it to Jamie.

“Sorry,” Malcolm said quietly. “I got the wrong end of the fucking stick and I’m fucking sorry, right?”

“I know,” Jamie said. “But you can’t fly off the handle like that, Malcolm. Even I’ve never done that, and my fucking reputation for fucking psycho patter precedes me. You’re not bad tempered. Not to that fucking extreme, anyway. Nicola’s right – you’re ill, and fucking _everybody_ but you can see it.”

* * *

 

It was nearly three o’clock by the time Malcolm got to Bella’s house. He had decided to take public transport because he could not possibly drive, he didn’t want to be in a car alone with a driver, and he needed the methodical process of stops and lines to keep him calm. When Aoife opened the door, he was surprised to find she didn’t show any sign of being afraid of him, or even angry with him. When he actually thought about it, he realised it probably shouldn’t have surprised him at all. “Feeling better?” she asked as she let him in.

“Not really,” he said ambiguously; he didn’t particularly want to admit he had just injured a room full of people.

“Should think not. You made a right holy show of yourself last night, ye feckin’ eejit.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Sorry about that.”

“Ella’s in there. Mind how you go – I’d be eatin’ the head off ya if I was her.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

“I know that wasn’t you,” she shrugged. “Your man in the café, who was there for me when I was sat there shreddin’ me own nerves? He’s the Malcolm Tucker I know.”

He went to the living room to find Ella watching a film. She looked up when he entered the room, but did not say anything. Malcolm searched her for any indication of what she might be feeling but she was wearing a passive mask that terrified him more than the shrieking and wailing in her sleep. “Ella,” he said, sitting down on the sofa next to her, “can we talk?” She didn’t answer, but she also didn’t decline. Malcolm could only assume that meant he was permitted to keep talking. “What I did last night, the things I said to you and your mum, I’m sorry. It was unforgivable.”

“Fucking right it was,” she replied.

“Language!” Aoife said, but Malcolm waved her down. Ella had every right to swear at him if it got her point across.

“I don’t expect you to understand what happened,” Malcolm said.

“That’s the bloody problem with you,” Ella said. “You think you’re _so_ complex, that nobody could ever understand you. I don’t know if it’s because you don’t want us to understand or if you think we’re all just thick. You forget that I was there too. I got Mum’s head above the water in that loch. I watched someone get shot. I had a gun pointed at me. If there is anyone in the world that might understand, it’s me.”

Malcolm inched closer to her. “There’s more than that, Ella,” he admitted. “I was…damaged,” he settled on the right adjective, “a long, long time before I even met your mum. What happened in Scotland is sort of the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Aoife called from the kitchen, “Malcolm, ye feckin’ streak of misery, you want tea?!”

Ella laughed. Even Malcolm smiled. Aoife always did speak her mind. “Aye, please!” he shouted back.

“What happened?” Ella asked. Malcolm shot her a questioning look. “People aren’t born damaged.”

Malcolm surveyed her for a moment. This was the last thing he wanted to be doing, telling Ella what set the wheels in motion for his troubled and angry life. But she deserved some shred of honesty. And he needed her to understand that he wasn’t this way because he wanted to be. Fucking hell, if he could have been a different man, he’d have walked on fire to be that man.

“When I was...” he began, but had to clear his throat with a cough when his voice failed. “When I was sixteen, my dad, he killed himself. I found his body. And ever since then, I’ve been a very angry, volatile person. I was horrible to my sister, in particular. That’s why I wanted you to go to the doctor. If I’d gone when I was a kid, I might not have ended up with the problem I’ve got now.”

Ella looked down at her knees, her movie – what Malcolm recognised as _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ – still playing on Bella’s television. “I know you didn’t mean those things you said,” Ella admitted. “If you did, you wouldn’t have put all your energy into trying to look after Mum, and Sophie, Ben and me.”

“It’s more than tiredness, darlin’,” Malcolm explained. “It eats away at you until your head starts telling you things that you know aren’t true, and yet you believe them anyway.”

“I know,” Ella said. “Jesus, believe me, I know.” She looked up at him. “But I can’t get better if you’re shouting at us all the time, even if you don’t mean the things you say.”

“That’s why your mum made me stay with your granny last night.”

“But I also can’t get better without you around, either,” she murmured. “Mum, I know she loves me, but she doesn’t always understand. You can see things she can’t, and I need you. The version of you that treats me with kindness. ‘Cause I _know_ you can be kind when you’re not kicking yourself when you’re already down.”

Aoife walked into the room with a tray with three mugs and a plastic cup, and Alasdair following with a plate of biscuits. “Sure, what did your last slave die of?” Aoife smirked.

“Defenestration,” Malcolm shot back at her. “Gave me cheek one too many times.”

“Funny, that. Me last master fell in the Boyne River. Gave out to me one too many times,” Aoife grinned as she sat down in an armchair with Alasdair on her lap. He clung to her while he watched Dementors swoop through the lightning-filled air on the television.

Ella reached out and put her hand on Malcolm’s arm, her fingers toying with the bracelet that had seldom left his wrist since Christmas. “You made me go to the doctor because I was out of control, and I needed help,” she said. “But you’re out of control, too. And when I lose control, I need you to help me get it back, and you can’t do that if you’re not well enough.”

“Thing is, Ella, to do that, I need to speak, and there are things I just can’t say.”

Aoife’s phone beeped, and she laughed as she read the screen. Ella, much to Malcolm’s amusement, rolled her eyes. “All day,” she said. “ _All day_. She’s got a boyfriend and she is _insufferable_ ,” she complained. Malcolm didn’t correct her, but did smirk and raise his eyebrows at Aoife.

“This your date from yesterday?” he asked her, careful not to mention any pronouns.

She smiled and said, “Yeah.”

“How long have you been seeing each other?”

“Since Monday.”

Malcolm let out a disbelieving chuckle. “You’re this bloody head over heels for somebody you’ve known _four days_?!”

Aoife turned around in her chair and said, “D’ya know when someone is just…right? Like they’re just…they fit? They understand you and even when they don’t quite get it, they still want to know? And you can just _be_ with them? There’s no pressure to be something you’re not because somehow they see everything you are, and they accept it anyway. They’re just happy you exist.”

Ella looked at Aoife and then at Malcolm, her expression one of exasperation; Malcolm could see how a day of this sort of thing could have pissed Ella off. Nevertheless, Malcolm did say to Aoife, “Yeah. That was me and Nicola, once upon a time.”

“It will be again,” Aoife replied, “once the pair of you get your collective shit together.”

Malcolm leaned forward and rubbed his hands over his tired face. “That can’t happen unless I spill everything, and I can’t do it.”

Aoife stood up and went to the sideboard, looking through the top drawer; she strode over to Malcolm and handed him a notebook and a pen. “Me mam always said if you can’t say something, you’ll just have to write it down.” Malcolm took the book and pen from her. “But before you do anything, go up to the spare room and get some sleep. You look shattered. Marks under your eyes and everything.”

“Thanks a lot,” he said sarcastically. He did not pass up the opportunity, though; even he had to admit he was exhausted. In fact, today might not have gone so badly if he’d got any sleep last night. Or perhaps it would have done. He would never know.


	17. Forwards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since I updated. Between starting medication, my mother chucking my stepdad out and me preparing to move to Ireland (God fucking help me), it's been a combination of no time and no energy to write. But here we are.

That night, as he stood in Bella’s living room with his wife, the walls came crumbling down before either of them even opened their mouth to speak. Nicola could see him. She could see Malcolm from the outside of his cage. There was a freedom in it, but Malcolm had discovered that too late for it to be of any comfort.

“I didn’t know what to say. How to say it. I’m shit at talking, Nicola, you know that.” Nicola allowed him a small smile; he winced internally at the bruise he had left on her face. “Aoife told me to write it down,” he murmured. Giggling came from the next room, Aoife and Bella cooked with the children, while Malcolm fidgeted with a sheet of paper torn from a notepad. “I don’t even know if you’ll…” he hesitated. “I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s mostly fucking gibberish.”

Nicola stepped forwards and took the paper from him; she opened it up and chuckled. “Were you a doctor in a past life or something?” she joked. Malcolm glowered at her. This was no time for joking. He was, after all, trying to do what she needed him to do. He was trying to let her in. “Dear Nicola,” she read aloud. “I don’t know where to start. Maybe with a sorry, but there aren’t enough apologies to cover what I’ve put you through. I’m not like you. You’re kinder than me. Wiser. Stronger. You would have dealt with things differently and you would have done it better than I have. The thing is, I can’t. I can’t deal with it. It’s like it’s ringing in my ears and smacking me over the head and I can’t do anything to make it stop. Knowing I can’t get rid of it just makes it worse because I’m used to control. And you. I love you. It kills me when you’re in pain and there’s nothing I can do to take it away. If I could, I would take it from you and endure it myself instead.”

Nicola’s voice faltered but she did not lift her gaze from the paper. Instead, she cleared her throat and ploughed onwards.

“That’s just it, though. I can’t take any more pain or fear. I’m tired of being afraid and stressed. I’m too tired to find any control and it’s all slipping out of my hands,” she continued. “I’m so angry. I’m angry because my dad is dead. I’m angry because I got shot. I’m angry because James has put you and the children through torture. I’m angry because I didn’t raise my own daughter. I’m angry because I need to change the world she lives in so she can live as herself all the time and not just between these walls. But I’m scared because I can’t change the world or what has happened in it. I’m scared I might lose you and the children. I’m scared I might lose Bella. I’m scared because being angry and afraid drowns everything else out and I get tunnel vision and my feet are never on the ground and I can’t see where I’m going or what I’m doing. I’m scared I’m going insane. It never stops and I’m scared I’m going insane. I don’t want to be here. What’s the point of living if I can’t feel like I’m going to be okay?”

Malcolm looked at the floor. That was where he had been forced to stop writing. Continuing on the subject of his waning sanity had proven too much for him to bear. When he eventually lifted his head, Nicola was wiping away tears. A rush of guilt swept through him; the last thing he had wanted was for her to start fucking crying again.

“I didn’t know it was this bad,” she murmured. “I knew there was something going wrong, but I didn’t know you’re this…I didn’t know you were in this kind of turmoil.”

“Neither did fucking I,” he grumbled. “I don’t think I knew half of that ‘til I fucking wrote it down.”

“But Malcolm,” Nicola said, her tone firmer now, “you _cannot_ keep taking it out on us. I know it’s hard on you, but I can’t have the kids living with a man who scares them. It’s not fair on them. Not after everything that happened with James.”

Vague though the comparison to James was, it still aggravated the monster that twisted his heart. “I’m not James,” he reminded her.

“You did a bloody good impersonation last night.”

“Oh, give it a rest,” he retorted. “I fucking apologised! What more do you want? My fucking blood?!”

“I want you to understand, Malcolm!” Nicola said earnestly. “I need you to understand that I was _frightened_ of you! I need you to have the empathy to have the faintest idea of what it is to be terrified of the person who’s meant to protect you from harm!”

“I…” Malcolm began, but he could not form the right words. He thought of Verity, and how scared she had been of him all those years ago. And Ella, whose own father had tried to take her forcibly from her home, and who had not lowered the gun when she stepped in front of it – she was scared enough to carry a knife on her person. Ben, and the fear he must have felt as his father wielded a knife. Bella and Euan, and the racist attacks they had been subjected to. Sophie, when she had been grabbed in the darkness, and bullied at school for being afraid to speak. And Nicola. Nicola, who had survived marriage with James Murray. She must have been afraid just about every day for years. But now it was Malcolm who frightened her.

Fear of another person wasn’t something Malcolm was all that familiar with. On that front, he had always held his own. Of the tangible and the visible, Malcolm was rarely scared. The only people who really scared him were Nicola and himself – and their failing mental health. And that fear alone was crushing him; if that was what he had inflicted on Nicola then he did not deserve her for a wife.

“I didn’t want to frighten you,” he said eventually. “You should be able to trust me, and I was wrong to make you feel like I can’t be trusted. I know that.”

Nicola watched him carefully. “Alright. I think you do understand how frightened I was. But do you see, Malcolm, you need _help_? You need help to control this anger of yours. I understand why you’re angry – Christ knows I am too – but you’ve got to control it. We all do.” She looked down at the letter once more, and said, “This, about not wanting to be here, that’s-”

“I know what it fucking sounds like,” Malcolm sighed, “but I wouldn’t.”

“People who are fine don’t even think of it,” Nicola replied sharply. “You know that, don’t you?” Malcolm turned his back on her. He should never have written those words. All it had done was upset her. “It’s okay if that’s how you feel, but we have to do something about it.”

Malcolm froze. “ _We_?”

“Yes, we.” Nicola’s tone was firm – one even Malcolm had to think twice about arguing with. But that second thought was obliterated by her words from the night before.

“Last night you were all for a fucking divorce,” he snapped, turning on his heel to face her again. “Make your fucking mind up, woman!”

“I don’t _want_ a divorce, Malcolm!” Nicola shouted. It seemed he had been right to have second thoughts about arguing with her; he had just frayed the last few threads of her temper. “Fucking hell, I don’t want a divorce! I want _you_! I want the man I married, not the ill-natured twat who can’t keep a lid on his anger! I want my marriage back, not a fucking divorce!”

That didn’t make any sense to him. Why would she rather put in more than she was getting out, when she could just cut the whole thing down at the roots and save herself? “You were right yesterday,” he said quietly. “You’ll be better off without me.”

“You don’t believe that,” Nicola answered him. “You don’t believe that, for the very simple reason that it’s not true.”

“But you’ve just said you can’t deal with my-”

“No, I said you need help to control yourself! That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, you fucking moron!”

Taken aback by her forcefulness, Malcolm stood in silence. This was Nicola taking the reins. Taking control. Not because she was struggling with her surroundings, but because she could see he was not able to do it himself. He had never thought he would fail to bring his fifty percent to their partnership, but here he was, watching Nicola compensate for his shortfalls.

Nicola took a step forwards. “I want you to come home like Mum said, where you’re safe and loved,” she said, “but I need to make sure I will be safe, and that the children will be safe. I’m trying to protect everyone here and it feels like the harder I try, the worse I fail all of you.”

“You’re not fucking failing.”

She smiled slightly and pushed her hair behind her ears. “Come home tonight. We can try. And even if it all goes to shit, we can say we tried.” She held up his letter. “And we can talk about this. _Really_ talk about it.”

That idea was not at all appealing, but Malcolm was beginning to fear it was a necessary step to take. “Don’t you have the fucking sense to get rid of me?”

“I guess not, no.”

There was a knock at the door, and Bella stepped into the living room. “Dad, Ben wants to speak to you. He was asking questions about what’s happened. I tried explaining but I think he needs to hear it from you.”

Malcolm sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. Bella was taking better care of the kids than he was, and it wasn’t her responsibility. “Aye,” he sighed. “Aye, tell him to come here.”

When he looked up, Bella was gone and Nicola was coming to sit next to him. She was not walking away like she ought to; Malcolm wasn’t sure whether or not he should have let her stand by him. Ben cautiously entered the room and closed the door behind him. The first thing he said was, “What happened to Mum’s face? And your head?”

“There was a bit of a misunderstanding at work, sweetheart,” Nicola replied. “Things just got a little bit out of hand, that’s all.”

Ben sat down in the armchair closest to them. “And what happened last night? Why did you shout at Mum and Ella?” he asked; this time, he spoke directly to Malcolm.

Malcolm hesitated. He didn’t want to be explaining himself to a child. “I got very angry,” he said slowly, “and I took it out on Ella and your mum. It was horrible of me, and I shouldn’t have done it. I’m very sorry.”

“What does that kind of anger feel like?”

He frowned and exchanged a quick glance with Nicola; he could tell she was as clued up about Ben’s line of questioning as he was. “It feels like your stomach is in knots and your heart might explode,” Malcolm explained, “and all you want to do is break things and shout at people.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Malcolm began, trying to word his explanation into something a child could comprehend. “Because feeling that angry is usually because you’re feeling something else too, but you don’t know how to feel the other thing, and you _really_ don’t want anybody else to see the other thing when you don’t know how to deal with it. Even though you feel horrible and it hurts the people you love, it’s easier to be angry. But just because it’s easy, that doesn’t mean it’s right.”

Malcolm could feel Nicola’s hand on his leg. “Is there anything that makes it feel better, so you’re not as angry?” Ben asked.

“I haven’t found it yet,” he said. It was better to be honest, for a child could usually pick a lie apart in a matter of minutes. “There are things that might help it feel better. I just haven’t found them yet.”

Ben looked down at his knees, and Nicola got up to kneel in front of him in his chair. “Is there something you want to tell us, Ben, darling?”

He didn’t raise his head, but he did open his mouth and speak. “I think I’m like Malcolm,” he murmured. “I want to break things and hurt people. I’m always angry. _All the time_ ,” he added emphatically. “It’s horrible. I don’t want to be angry anymore.”

“You don’t have to be,” Malcolm assured him. The phone rang in the hallway, its shrill alarm causing him to startle slightly. “There are people who can help you stop feeling like that.”

It dawned on Malcolm that what he kept advocating to his children and his wife – help, support, counselling – was exactly what he resisted himself, like he was above needing such treatment. But he was not better than them. He was not stronger than them. If needing support didn’t make them any less worthy than him, why should it make him any less worthy than them?

As Ben leaned forwards into Nicola’s waiting arms, Malcolm stood up and left them, briefly stroking Ben’s head as he passed. This was it. This was the point at which he had to make the choice to put his family before his pride and his secrets. In the kitchen, Ella, Sophie, Eilidh and Alasdair were sitting at the kitchen table with a deck of cards while Bella and Aoife did the cooking tasks that weren’t exactly child-friendly. Ella looked up when he approached; she did not look so much scared as she looked concerned.

Bella was holding the house phone to her ear as she stirred a pot. “Whit ye dae that fur?!” she exclaimed down the phone. Everyone in the room stared at her for the shortest of moments before going back to their business. “Mind ye dinnae git the hornies oan ye, Euan, fur fuck’s sake…aye, well, nae need fur cryin’ the cowie a scaldie tae he’s face! He’ll jan yer aff nackens noo! Aye, right. Love you too.”

She hung up the phone and tossed it carelessly onto the counter. “Everything alright?” Aoife asked.

“Euan’s a fucking eejit, but that’s hardly breaking news,” Bella grumbled. She turned around. “You away home the night?”

“Yeah,” Malcolm said, leaning against the wall. “Yeah, looks like it.”

“Good,” Bella said harshly. “It’s about time you got your fucking act together.” Malcolm fixed her with a glare but was left wondering why he ever fucking bothered trying that on her. It had no effect on her whatsoever. Instead of faltering under his glower, Bella ordered him, “Get the plates out.”


	18. Locked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. I'm in Ireland. It hasn't rained in WEEKS. The heat is killing us all. Send help.

It was a fortnight later that the whole family gathered at Nicola and Malcolm’s home for a summer barbecue. Malcolm watched the children run; Ella hovered between the adults and the kids, apparently unsure of where she belonged. Eventually, Ella did settle next to Aoife, who was rapidly heading towards being hammered.

Nicola stood next to Malcolm as he cooked, her arm around his waist, and talked to Bella. He much preferred it that way, as her attempts at helpfulness when he cooked were rarely very fucking helpful. “The problem with Ollie isn’t just that he’s unreliable and selfish – the idiot thinks he’s hilarious.”

“That cunt’s as funny as a fire in an orphanage,” Bella snorted into her bottle of beer. Nicola choked on her wine when she laughed mid-swallow.

“You’re certainly your father’s daughter,” she giggled.

“Mum!” Ben called out. “I’m starving! When’s dinner?!”

“Do you want food or food poisoning?!” Malcolm shouted across the garden.

“Food!”

“Then wait ‘til it’s cooked!”

A ripple of laughter washed over the family. It felt like normality – or as close to normality as he and his disjointed family had any hope of experiencing. He was surrounded by people he loved, at the very least.

Victoria emerged from the house with a pile of plates in her hands; Euan followed behind her, carrying a bowl of salad, and a fresh bottle of 7Up under his arm. “Eilidh!” he said. “Get over here and take this bottle, afore I drop it!” Eilidh obeyed, and just in time – the bottle was just about to drop from her father’s drip when she took it.

For the first time in ages, Malcolm felt somewhat loved. Part of a family. Even the simple task of cooking felt important to him, but he could do it without thinking of worst case scenarios that involved fucking wildfires and food poisoning and fuck knows what else. He had almost forgotten he was able to operate like this, without internal meltdown.

Once upon a time he had dreaded family meals and gatherings – any time at which he was left vulnerable to the gaze of those who claimed to know him best. It left such room for conversation, and there was only a finite period during which he could sustain small talk. And that had only been two weeks ago. Though he was still a long way from being entirely healthy, Malcolm could scarcely believe the difference a little medication and counselling had achieved. He _wanted_ to make progress these days, and he wanted to put the effort into the relationships he most valued, whether it be with his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his mother-in-law…he wanted them to be a family, because Christ knows they’d been pulled apart often enough. But he had never known this willingness in himself to actually try.

And it showed in everything around him. His wife was close to him once more. His children spent time with him because they wanted to, because, as Sophie had put it earlier today, he was ‘fun again.’

Even his relationship with Aoife, though it was the least strained, had strengthened. He let his gaze briefly move onto the young Irishwoman, who sat half-cut next to Ella. He gave Bella the barbecue tongs and told her, “Keep an eye on this, will you? And don’t let Nicola touch it. She could burn ice.”

Nicola glared at him, but he just grinned at her. It was not the hard, unforgiving glare she had set on him in recent months, but the soft, amused one she had always answered his jokes about her cooking with.

He went to Aoife’s side, giving Ella a silent request for a few moments’ privacy. She clearly understood, for she went to see what Alasdair was poking at in the flowerbed. “Aoife,” he said quietly, “slow the fuck down, lass.”

Aoife glowered at him. “Why? I’m overage, I’m not mindin’ the kids, and the whole concept of a barbecue is an excuse for a family piss up. What’s the problem?”

“Are you okay?” he asked her. Aoife looked at him like he was from Neptune, seemingly surprised by his question. “What’s wrong?”

“Does somethin’ need to be wrong before I’m allowed to get locked?”

“No,” Malcolm answered, “but I can tell you’re not quite fucking right. If there’s a problem, just tell me. Maybe I can help. Or Nicola – maybe she’s a fucking car crash of a human being but she’s raised three daughters. She’s got some maternal instinct in her.”

“You’re hardly in a position to be givin’ out about this kinda shit,” she reminded him, her tone uncharacteristically harsh.

Malcolm sighed and told her, “Whatever it is, you _can_ fucking speak about it. Fucking hell, look at the damage it does to keep quiet. Look what’s happened to us because we didn’t say we were fucking suffering.”

Aoife didn’t reply, so he gently clapped her shoulder; that stubborn look in her eyes was all too familiar, and he know he would get nowhere with her for the present moment. However, he resolved to ask again. The very fact that she had looked at him like he had ten heads for asking in the first place told him he needed to persevere. She was far too young to be left to mirror his mistakes.

“…the men go coichy when the yellow’s on the broom,” Bella was saying to Nicola when he returned to man the barbecue. “Better just let them get on wi’ it.”

* * *

 

That evening, well after ten o’clock, Nicola and Bella decided that everyone would stay the night, as nobody was even close to being fit to drive. So they sat in the living room, the rain having driven them indoors; Aoife was quite drunk, and teaching the kids an Irish folk song: “ _And on that heel, there was a tiny feckin’ nail, a rare nail, a rattlin’ nail! The nail on the heel, and the heel on the leg, and the leg on the flea, and the flea on the feather, and the feather on the chick, and the chick in the egg, and the egg in the nest, and the nest on the twig, and the twig on the branch, and the branch on the tree, and the tree in the hole, and the hole in the bog, the bog down in the valley-o!_ ” she sang out in one breath. Considering she was pissed, that rather impressed Malcolm.

“ _O-ro, the rattlin’ bog,_ ” the kids sang with her, _“the bog down in the valley-o! O-ro, the rattlin’ bog, the bog down in the valley-o!_ ”

“Right,” Nicola said firmly once they were finished, now on her feet. “Everyone under the age of sixteen, bed!”

Immediately, Eilidh protested, only for Bella to bark, “Oi, ye wee madam! Dae as yer granny tells ye!”

Malcolm smirked as Nicola cringed a little. She was still not used to the idea of being a grandmother to a seven-year-old in her mid-forties, though she was likely relieved it came about because the teen pregnancy was Bernadette’s and not one of her own children. “I’m going to bed as well,” she said wearily. “The wine has caught up with me, I think.” She bent down and gently kissed Malcolm. “Goodnight. Don’t get too pissed.”

Malcolm smiled and kissed her cheek. “Pot and fucking kettle,” he said. Nicola raised an eyebrow at him and turned away to lead the children to bed.

“I’m away too,” Bella piped up. “Alasdair won’t sleep if he knows I’m awake and down here.”

So they all bade one another goodnight, until Malcolm, Euan, Victoria and Aoife were the only ones left downstairs. “Got any crisps?” asked Aoife. Euan grinned. “What? I’m a hungry drunk. You know this about me.”

Shaking his head to himself, Malcolm told her, “There’s crisps in the cupboard to the right of the cooker.”

“She okay?” Euan asked when Aoife was out of the room. “She’s no’ hersel’, like. Never seen her get pished so fast.”

“I’m sure she’ll be alright,” Victoria said reassuringly. “She’s quite a robust young woman, from what I’ve seen of her.” Malcolm held his silence; he did not want to do anything that might worsen Aoife’s frame of mind in any way.

Aoife returned with her arms filled with bags of crisps. “Here,” she smiled, chucking a bag at each of them. “They’re not Tayto, but I suppose they’ll do,” she sighed as she threw herself down between Malcolm and Euan. “What’s the time?”

“Time ye got a fuckin’ watch,” Euan smirked.

Aoife retaliated by pulling rather an immature face at him and saying, “Feck off, ya maggot!”

Victoria could only roll her eyes at the pair of them. “It’s nearly eleven, Aoife.”

Malcolm could see now that this was what family was supposed to be. Even the Irish girl, with whom he shared no genetic or marital links, was now his family. Wasn’t it strange, the different origins in four members of the same family? Glasgow, Perthshire, Louth, London. Scotsman, Traveller, Irishwoman, Englishwoman. A young woman raised as a Catholic surrounded by grown adults who only set foot in churches for weddings, christenings and funerals. On the surface, they shared very little. And yet here they were – four members of a family.

It was Victoria who snapped him out of his reverie when she asked, “How is your therapy going, Malcolm? Do you think it’s doing anything positive for you?”

He hesitated; it was not a natural thing, to talk about mental health, especially in the environment of government. To be open about it was sure to backfire even more catastrophically than if he ignored it completely. But hadn’t everyone in this room seen the worst of him? Euan and Aoife had seen him rage uncontrollably at Nicola and Ella. Victoria had seen his nightmares, and how lost he often was when it came to dealing with his wife and children. They knew his head was in a total fucking mess. What was there to hide from those who had seen just about everything?

“Yeah,” he eventually sighed, shifting his weight as Aoife leaned drunkenly against his arm, so that she would be comfortable. “Yeah, having somewhere quiet and controlled to go over all the fucking shit that’s happened seems to help. Even if the shrink’s opinions are a wee bit fucking useless half the time.”

Victoria smiled. It was easy for even Malcolm to tell that she was relieved. Guilt washed over him for a moment, as he realised he had put her through the same as James Murray had done – witnessing her daughter scared for herself and her children. He was intoxicated enough for his heart to want to give her every apology he owed her, and to thank her for being the unfuckable voice of reason in his world. But his head told him not to make himself vulnerable. What good ever came of fucking himself over like that? So he gave her a small smile, and hoped she had the ability to pick apart everything it meant.

Aoife wriggled against Malcolm’s side until his arm was around her shoulders. The alcohol had well and truly hit her now. “Sometimes I wish you were my da,” she said. “Or even you, Euan. You’re wired to the feckin’ moon, sure, but you’re not a cunt.”

“Fuckin’ thanks,” Euan chuckled, taking a swig of beer.

“I’m never goin’ home,” she asserted, her voice slurred. “I’m stayin’ with you lot for ever and ever.”

“Aoife?” Victoria asked. Her brow was furrowed, and Malcolm knew she now shared his concerns about Aoife. “Are you alright, sweetheart?”

“I’m grand,” she smiled.

Malcolm sighed and rested his hand on the side of Aoife’s head for a moment. She seemed so confused. How could having a girlfriend confuse her like this? It was bizarre, the way the whole concept ate her up. Or was it more that she felt she had to hide it?

“Like fuck you are,” Euan retorted. “Spit it the fuck oot, wid ye?”

Aoife lifted her head a little to look at her host-dad. “I can’t. You’ll hate me. You’ll send me back to fuckin’ Drogheda and it’ll all be fucked.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous,” Victoria scolded her. “What could you have possibly done to make anyone send you home to Ireland?”

“It isn’t what I’ve done. It’s what I _am_. And what I want. Fuckin’ everythin’ about me.”

“Oh, fur fuck’s sake!” Euan cried. “Aoife, is all this ‘cause you’re a fuckin’ lesbian?”

Aoife sat upright. If she didn’t look confused before, she definitely fucking did now. Malcolm struggled to hold in the snigger induced by Euan’s exasperation. “Wait,” she said. “You know?”

“‘Course I dae, ye fuckin’ bamstick! Christ, I knew it the first time I went to the fuckin’ pub wi’ ye! Yeh’re no’ very subtle when yeh eye up the lassies. Fuckin’ hell,” he shook his head in despair.

Malcolm couldn’t contain it. He fell forward, laughing into the back of Aoife’s shoulder. “And you don’t mind?”

“Well, ye need tae work on yer flirtin’ skills,” he grinned. “Yeh’re offensively bad at it. Ye come across like yeh’re fuckin’ care in the community. But I’m no’ giein’ a flyin’ fuck if you’re gay, and neither is Bella. Just who ye are.” He pulled Aoife in and kissed her temple. “Yeh’ve always got a home and a family wi’ us, no matter what.” Aoife smiled slightly, looking like she couldn’t quite believe her luck. “And on that cheery note, I’m away tae bed.”

“You should go as well, Aoife, because none of us can carry you up the stairs,” Victoria said sternly; Malcolm reckoned she just didn’t want the kid to drink anything more, which was fair enough.

“Good shout,” Aoife said, getting unsteadily to her feet. “I don’t even know how much drink I’m after havin’,” she admitted. She leaned down and kissed Malcolm’s cheek, and then Victoria’s, before she and Euan stumbled their giggly path towards the stairs. As fucking giddy and ridiculous as they were, Malcolm enjoyed seeing them having some kind of fun.

He was left with Victoria, who saw through his walls with unnerving ease. “You knew, didn’t you? About Aoife?” she said.

Malcolm nodded, looking down into his glass. “She told me a wee while back,” he replied quietly. “It wasn’t my place to fucking spread it around.”

And Victoria understood. Malcolm didn’t need to ask if she did. That was a policy she lived by even where her own daughter was concerned: unless it’s going to save them, it’s nobody’s place to tell another’s secrets.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m…” he began, unsure of how to say what he now knew about himself. “I know how to behave. But I’m not always in a good place. Sometimes I’m in the same fucking Hell I was in a few weeks ago.”

“I know. And that’s okay.” Malcolm looked up at his mother-in-law with a frown. “Nobody expects you to always be fine, Malcolm. We just want you to ask for help before it’s too late.” He nodded curtly, briefly wondering how many times in the next decade she would tell him that. At least there was someone there to do it. Victoria stood up and patted his knee. “Come on. Bed, before you crash out down here.”

Malcolm stood, too, and quickly pulled Victoria into a tight hug. He felt her return it, her arms wrapped around his torso. “Thank you, Victoria. This family would be in fucking bits without you.”

“You’re welcome,” she mumbled. “That’s what I’m here for, you know. I want my family to thrive – and that does include you.”

They released one another. “‘Night,” Malcolm said to her.

“Goodnight, Malcolm.”

He headed upstairs, where all was calm and quiet, and went into his bedroom. In the half-light, he could see Nicola lying in bed, somehow both fragile and indestructible. He took his jeans and shirt off and climbed into bed beside her. “Everything okay?” she mumbled sleepily.

Malcolm kissed her shoulder. “We’ll be okay,” he whispered. “We’ll be fucking a-okay.”

She turned around, her nose now barely an inch from his. “Bella was telling me earlier that Euan wants to go on the road for a few weeks. Being stuck between four walls all the time isn’t good for him.”

“The life he’s lived, being between four walls must be like being held in fucking Guantanamo Bay.”

“Is it safe for him to go on the road?”

“Is anything ever really safe?”

“You know what I mean,” she accused him.

“I don’t, actually,” he confessed.

“The conditions they live in can be…”

“Shit?” Malcolm supplied.

Nicola laughed. “Well, yes.”

“He’ll be fine. The conditions might be fucking diabolical by your standards, but they were raised on the road. They know how to handle it. Just try not to worry about it too much.” He pushed her hair behind her ear and pressed a kiss to her lips. “We should go on holiday this summer, while Euan’s on the road.”

“I thought Cabinet ministers aren’t allowed flashy holidays?”

Malcolm glowered at her, even though he knew she could barely see it. “Too fucking right. But that’s not to say we can’t fuck off up north for a week. It’ll be good to get out of this fucking rabbit warren of a city.”

Nicola wrapped an arm around his waist and said, “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Right now, I just want a cuddle.”

He held her close, and could feel her fall asleep against his chest. Maybe it really was going to be okay.


	19. Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Camping up in County Roscommon on Monday. I've never seen a family need so many home comforts for camping - I thought camping was a tent and a blanket, and the makings of a campfire, but maybe not. Plus, my host mum has no common sense and my host dad has no patience, so fuck knows how this is gonna go. Blood may be shed.

The bright sunlight through the curtains woke Malcolm the next morning; his bedside clock told him it wasn’t even six yet. He was awake before six o’clock on a Sunday morning, for fuck’s sake. He reached an arm out behind, trying to find Nicola’s body – she wasn’t there.

“Fuck!” Malcolm muttered to himself, as he got out of bed and looked around his bedroom for his wife. “Nicola?” he called out, while trying to keep his voice low enough that he didn’t wake anyone else currently asleep in the house. Panic crept out into his veins as he went from the bedroom to the landing. He frantically looked into the bathroom – he had found her there once before – before he noticed that one particular door was open.

Malcolm stepped into Katie’s bedroom, making no noise, to find Nicola sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. “You okay, Nic’la?” he asked of her. The kindness in his own voice surprised him; how long had it been since he was kind to his wife?

Nicola wiped her eyes and smiled up at him. The smile was by no means insincere, but it was filled with the unmistakable sadness and grief she so seldom spoke of. “Yes,” she replied simply. “Are you hungover?” she added with a grin.

“Wee bit,” he admitted. “Not too bad though. I’d say fucking Euan’ll have it worse.”

“What about Aoife? She drank the pair of you under the table!”

“If it wasn’t for the fact her genetics fucked her liver up, I think she’d be in bed living on fry ups and paracetamol,” he smirked. “But the lucky little cunt doesn’t get hangovers.” Malcolm found himself groaning as he got down on the floor to sit next to Nicola; fucking hell, he was getting old.

“I think it’s time to sort this room out, Malcolm,” she murmured.

“You don’t have to. Nobody’s gonna force you.”

“I know that. But it’s been nearly two fucking years,” Nicola said. “Katie would be telling me to pull my finger out my arse and put the room to better use, since she’s never coming home.” Malcolm heard that lump in her throat, and almost told her to stop before she got upset, until he remembered that she said it because she needed to. “But if I do it, then she really isn’t coming home ever again, is she? Half the time I think I’ve got my subconscious convinced she’s still swanning around somewhere. Anywhere. Doesn’t matter where. Sometimes I actually forget she’s dead. And then I remember, and every time I remember, it hurts all over again. It’s pathetic, really.”

Malcolm exhaled slowly and tried to approach this as sensitively as his lack of sensitivity could grant him. “There’s no fucking time limit on these things, Nicola,” he said. “You might catch yourself thinking like that for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you’re fucking pathetic. It means you love your daughter.”

Nicola put her head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “What kind of example am I to my children if I can’t accept the fundamental concept of death?”

“You’re being _way_ too fucking hard on yourself,” he accused her brutally. Malcolm took Nicola’s hand in his; though he could hardly bear to see his wife in such abject sorrow, he was glad she shared it with him. That she talked about it with him, as she always had the right to.

“I’m not. I’m being realistic about how shit a mother and wife I am.”

“No, you’re holding yourself to fucking impossible standards. And a lot of that’s my fault,” he added. Nicola tore her gaze away from the ceiling and shot Malcolm a questioning look. “I’ve held you to higher standards than I’ve held myself. I’ve expected more of you than of anybody else, including myself. That wasn’t fucking fair. I’m sorry.”

She sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’ve done the same to you. I’ve expected you to be a dad to my children, to look after them and sacrifice yourself for them, but I’ve tried to keep all the control to myself. I was wrong to do that.”

He pulled up their hands and kissed her fingers. “As far as I’m concerned, I _am_ their dad. You know that.”

“You always were like that,” mused Nicola. “You’ve never done things by halves.”

“There’s no point in being half in and half out. It just gets fucking messy.”

He felt her kiss his arm. “I do love you, Malcolm.”

“I love you, too,” he said. “We just…” he trailed away, unable to find the way to describe the past few months.

“Got a bit lost,” she finished for him. “But I think I’ve found you again.”

“Why?”

“Do you remember the first time you held me in this house?” she asked.

Malcolm cast his mind back, but they had held one another so many times under this roof, he struggled to recall them all individually. But then his memory brought him the scent of rainwater mixed with shampoo. He remembered her head against his chest and the promise that Victoria was on her way to help out – before he had known what a fucking godsend that woman was. Ella had been downstairs making toast and chocolate milk. A grief-stricken Ben had refused to move himself from the windowsill, until Malcolm had talked to him about Katie. Nicola, unknown to him in that moment, had been beaten black and blue the night before. “I remember,” he heard himself say, still awash in the memory of that single embrace.

“I listened to your heart beating,” she said, “and suddenly you were this living, breathing man with a beating heart, and you were holding me. It felt like, for just a moment, I was important. Like someone would be upset if I were to disappear.” Malcolm tightened his grip on her hand. “And then all this happened and I didn’t know you anymore. Your heartbeat sounded distant, like I was hearing it from the other side of the street and I couldn’t cross over to you.”

“What about now?”

“Now, you’re here again. I woke up through the night and I listened to your heartbeat – it was loud and strong. I could hear it perfectly.”

Some small part of Malcolm wanted to mock her sentimental ways, until he remembered the first time she had ever seen him wake from a nightmare, and then hurtle headlong into a panic attack. She had made him feel safe and cared for; her capacity for compassion had amazed him. He had never known a human being so open with her sense of empathy, or so willing to use it for another’s healing. It was the first time in his adult life that anyone had made such an effort to look beyond the surface; the most incredible thing was that she did not judge what she found lurking there.

But Malcolm was not the same as Nicola. He didn’t have that ability to confess to his deepest emotions. Silence came more naturally – unless he was angry. He knew how to express anger, ferociously and destructively. Fear, sadness, joy, love, concern, regret…they did not flow so easily from his mouth. They festered and left him in the form of furious outbursts and livid attacks. It was like he had once told Jamie: he did not have an anger management issue. He had an emotional management issue.

He looked at his wife. It made so little sense that this utter disaster of a human being was his person. On paper, it was a catastrophe of fucking Chernobyl proportions. She was everything that did his fucking skull in: nonsensical, often sullen, nervous, self-doubting, disorganised, and with absolutely fuck all in the department of real world common sense. It was totally unreasonable that he should love the bones of this woman under every circumstance their lives propelled them into. But then, wasn’t she strong? She could love without restraint, and was determined to keep her family going, despite the few times she almost gave up. Her care and kindness for others was something Malcolm would never quite be able to mirror. Those traits were her. They ran deeper than anything about her that irritated him.

“A recovery room,” Nicola said, yanking him out of his own ocean of thoughts.

“What do you mean?”

“I think it’s high time we accept that we’ll never be a hundred percent alright again. Too much has happened.”

As much as Malcolm wanted to argue with that, he knew it was true. He didn’t feel like he even knew the man he had been two years ago. “What the fuck’s a recovery room when it’s at home?” he asked, already extremely sceptical of this idea.

“The room we can go to on bad days. After the panic attacks, nightmares, meltdowns, anything we struggle to deal with. We need some sort of refuge for when things feel unsurmountable.”

How many times had she proven she was this family’s carer? Even when she turned into a complete fucking control freak, it was because she was caring for her family when they needed her. She was just prone to heading too far down the wrong path while looking after them all. “Maybe you’re right,” he eventually sighed. “It’d be good for the kids.”

“It might be good for you, too. We have to be consciously kind to ourselves, Malcolm. It’s the only way through all of this that won’t tear us apart.”

“I don’t deserve you,” he said quietly.

“But you do,” she told him sternly. “You deserve someone who loves you, especially after the life you’ve had.”

“My life’s been no worse than anyone else’s.”

“Malcolm, you found your dad dead when you were just _sixteen_ ,” she said earnestly. “You found out you have a daughter when she was in her thirties. Fucking hell, you were _shot_!” Malcolm looked down at his own knees. “Those aren’t normal things to go through, and not everyone would survive them.”

“And what about you?” he retorted. “Your daughter died. Your ex-husband abused you, raped you, even tried to fucking murder you! You had cancer. And I haven’t been very fucking helpful, have I?”

“But don’t you get it?” she argued. “Don’t you understand the reason you’re still my husband?” Her head lifted from his shoulder and he knew without looking that she was staring into his face. “I love you. I don’t love you in spite of how complicated you are – it’s part of _why_ I love you! And I knew you weren’t well from the very first day we met, because I knew nobody reacts like you do at work if they have a healthy mind. I love how deeply you feel life, even though you ignore it because you don’t know what to do with that information. I love you for the way you did right by my children from the first time you ever saw them. I love you because you’re a good man, who doesn’t know how to call a ceasefire in his war with the world.”

He was humbled by her love for him, and her need to protect him. “Jesus, Nic’la, how can you possibly still think I’m a good man? Look at all you’ve put up with because of me!”

“The reasons for your actions speak louder than the actions themselves,” she explained. “Most of the time, you were trying to look after me, and the kids, and my mum. And as for your more malign moments, well, human beings aren’t designed to be perfect. If we were, we wouldn’t have any life at all.”

This insight into Nicola’s beliefs was little short of petrifying; she thought differently from him, with more innocence and forgiveness – even now, after all she had endured. It was a major player in why she was so fucking hopeless at her job, and yet what made her such a kind wife, mother and daughter. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone with any resemblance to himself for a wife; Nicola balanced him. She understood what he could not fathom, and he shielded her from what she knew better than any person should. He finally fully understood how he had ended up wanting to spend the rest of his life with her.

Malcolm looked up to find she was watching him, her bright eyes shining in the sunlight shining through Katie’s bedroom window. She placed her free hand onto his arm. “We need to stop second guessing ourselves,” she said, her voice soft, “and stop hiding from one another. We’re married, for Christ’s sake.”

He nodded silently. She always seemed to have the words when he did not, and when she could only give him silence, he helped her to break it.

Nicola got to her feet, and looked around herself. “We need to move the bed out,” she said matter-of-factly. “The dresser has to go as well. We’ll have to get rid of everything.” Malcolm stood up, for he sensed rash decision-making going on here. “We can donate it to a charity that helps people move out of abusive homes. Katie would have liked that.”

He took Nicola by the shoulders and examined her face; he could not tell if she was thinking entirely rationally, but he did know her well enough to know she would regret obliterating every last piece of evidence that Katie lived her life from this room. “Stop the fucking bus right there!” he told her urgently. “You’re gonna want to keep some of her belongings, Nicola.”

“It needs to be a fresh start.”

“Fresh starts are fucking overrated, trust me. Keep the small things. The photos and jewellery and school books. You’ll need them down the line.” He watched the tears spill over onto her cheeks, and knew exactly what she had been trying to achieve: a clean slate. But wiping out every last bit of her child’s memory was not the way forward.

Nicola angrily wiped away her tears. “It’s time to move on.”

“You feel like that now,” he reasoned, “but you might not feel like that tomorrow. You need to keep something to remember her by – if not for yourself, then for Ella, Sophie and Ben.”

“They need to move on, too.”

“Not like this. You don’t move on by forgetting she ever fucking existed.”

“But we can’t keep everything the same when the world outside is unrecognisable!”

“I’m not saying you should leave the room as it is,” he assured her. “I’m saying you need to keep a few things. Put them in a box. Keep them for when you want to remember her, because even though you forget she’s dead now, later on you might forget she ever fucking lived!” he said harshly. “You might not be able to remember exactly what she looked like, or what her handwriting was like, or what she loved.” He wanted to say that he knew it all too well – that all he remembered of his own father was his appearance in death, and that he had only ever known Katie after she was gone. But he could not. Instead, he pulled Nicola into his arms and kissed her head. “I just need you to trust me on this,” he whispered. “Don’t throw everything out. Keep the little things.”

Malcolm could feel Nicola hold herself close to him; the fucking DIY was going to be the least of this mission. More important was making sure Nicola didn’t take every remnant of Katie’s life away from herself, for he knew she would bitterly regret it later on.

“We’ll do it together. I’m with you, every fucking step of the way,” he promised her.


	20. Ginger Prick

The next few weeks were nothing short of fucking exhausting, especially when the school summer holidays started. Perhaps it had been a mistake to allow the children to take the reins on the redecoration of Katie’s bedroom. Before they had even been allowed in the door, Malcolm and Nicola had laid down the law to them. There was to be no _Fireman Sam_ , fairies, Pixar, _Hannah Montana_ , or any other thing that ought to have been contained to their own bedrooms. The other stipulation was that if Malcolm and Nicola were at work, they were only to decorate if and when Aoife visited them with Eilidh and Alasdair. It was not to be a free for all.

And, so far, they had obeyed. The three children were working as a team for the first time in so long; Malcolm was relieved to know that they were still capable of being supportive siblings to one another.

Then there was Nicola, who was still reluctant to keep any of Katie’s belongings. He had managed to convince her to keep Katie’s school art sketchbooks; they were filled with her drawings, which were personal to her. Malcolm had also salvaged Katie’s floppy eared bunny soft toy, which she’d had since birth, by convincing Nicola that if Katie had kept it her whole life then she would not be at all impressed to see Nicola dispose of it. Katie’s English jotters – full of her essay drafts and interpretations of literature – had almost been binned too, until Malcolm told her that it was a valuable insight into how Katie’s mind worked. There was now a box of Katie’s things that had been saved from the dump.

Why Nicola wanted to chuck everything out, Malcolm could not quite understand. Her previous refusal to touch the room at all had made more sense; it had been rooted in a desire to hold on to her child. But this was surely madness. This was from one extreme to the other. Why was there never a middle ground where she was involved?

Emotion, Malcolm had learned in the hardest possible way, was not something that he could comprehend easily. He was just going to have to trust that Nicola had her reasons, and that she listened to him when he tried to help her.

Right now, however, Malcolm was storming through Number Ten after having to explain to the Prime Minister why he could not make “un-PC” jokes where journalists could hear him; the man was beyond the stage of being told he shouldn’t really make the jokes in the first place, so Malcolm hadn’t even attempted that.

“Fucking retarded cunt,” he hissed to himself as he threw open his office door. “Who the fuck says that?”

It was only when he walked into the room and saw the clock that Malcolm really did start running. It was five minutes to one, and he had promised Bella he would meet her at the Scottish Office to take her out for lunch. “Fuck’s sake!” he muttered.

In the corridor, he almost ran straight into Nicola, who had been handing in documents to the PM’s assistant – which Malcolm had rather grouchily reminded her to do half an hour earlier. “Where’s the fire?” she asked with a slight smirk.

“Lunch with Bella,” he replied.

“You forgot, didn’t you?” she grinned.

“No, I just fucking lost track of the time dealing with the Prime fucking Moron through there,” he said. “Honest to Christ, I swear he must’ve been in the fucking head by a horse as a kid.”

“You’re only just realising this now?”

“Fucking hilarious. I better get moving,” he added. He leaned down and kissed her quickly on the lips. “See you later.”

“Love you,” she smiled.

Even now, Malcolm could feel himself go red in the face as he said, “Love you, too.”

Before she could embarrass him further, he hurried off out of the building. As he power-walked down the street, he realised that, five years ago, he could never have predicted that this would be his life. The only constant had been this hellhole of a workplace. He had never seen himself as a husband, a father, a grandfather…he doubted even his mother or sister could have seen him move in this direction. And yet here he was, glancing at his watch as he made a mad dash for the Scottish Office, not to give the Scottish Secretary and her underlings a bollocking, but to take his daughter out for lunch.

It turned out that he needn’t have rushed himself. Bella was still in her office, seemingly in the middle of an argument with her one of her civil servants. “Have I got ‘fucking retard’ stamped across my foreheid?!” she bellowed at a man in his early thirties Malcolm vaguely knew as Oscar. “What kind of fucking reprobate tells me they’ve fucked the numbers up but sent it to the Home Office anyway? Fuck off. Fix it, send the right numbers, with an email that begins, ‘I apologise for being a stupid wee ginger prick!’”

Oscar nodded, looking absolutely fucking petrified, and scurried out of Bella’s office. “Don’t you reckon the ‘ginger prick’ part was just a wee bit uncalled for?” Laura Brown said, though she did so while she barely supressed a grin.

“What? He’s ginger and he’s a fucking prick. It’s a simple statement of fact,” shrugged Bella. She looked over at Malcolm. “Where d’you want to eat?”

“Anywhere. I don’t mind.”

“You’re fucking helpful,” Bella retorted with a roll of her eyes. Malcolm could sense now that this went beyond her usual demeanour into the realms of a truly bad mood. “Be back in an hour, Laura. Try not let the ginger prick fuck up again.” Laura raised an eyebrow at her but nodded; obviously she still was not onboard with calling Oscar a ginger prick, but was not willing to rile her boss further.

Sitting in a café with coffee and sandwiches, Malcolm finally decided to ask Bella, “So what’s put your nose out of joint?”

“Who says my nose is out of joint?”

“Your fucking bastard of a mood.”

Bella held his stare for a moment before she let out a sigh and took a sip of coffee. “Euan said Aoife could invite her _friend_ over for dinner tonight. And by friend, I think she means boyfriend. She wants you lot there and all, by the way.”

Malcolm hesitated; this was treacherous ground. He had no idea just how far in or out of the loop Bella currently was when it came to her au pair’s sexuality. The only reasonable thing he could do was act on the assumption that Bella was oblivious. “And what’s the problem with that? Just a family dinner with an extra face,” he reminded her.

“Aye, an extra face who’ll see that the Scottish Secretary is a dirty wee tink,” Bella snapped. “There’s a reason I’m fucking wary about who gets into the house.”

“If they’re really Aoife’s friend then you could be a fucking mutant rainbow spider from the asteroid belt and they won’t have a problem with it,” he said. “They’ll know how much you mean to Aoife, and how much she respects you.”

Bella seemed sceptical, possibly because of her own past experience. Malcolm almost told her that Aoife was inviting her girlfriend, not a boyfriend, to dinner; Bella might not react well to a surprise, no matter how innocent. However, he reminded himself at the last moment that it was not his place to tell Bella that. It was down to Aoife when and how Bella was to be informed.

“And what if it’s a fucking disaster?”

“Then it’s a fucking disaster and we’ll deal with it if it is.”

At that, Bella allowed him a tiny but genuine smile.

* * *

 

When Malcolm parked in front of Bella’s house at quarter to seven that evening, he and Nicola were in the middle of a dispute over whether to go to Scotland this summer. Though it had been Malcolm’s suggestion in the first place, he now was having second thoughts about it. “It’s just such a fucking long drive, and you won’t take the fucking train!” he argued.

If he was honest with himself, the main problem was that he had realised that following Bella and Euan meant heading to Perthshire, the Highlands, Aberdeenshire, Dundee, Fife and Angus – places which held rather haunting memories. What if he got to Dundee and was overwhelmed by the memory of his last trip there? After all, his daughter had been in Ninewells and he had discovered that Nicola was ill. Or if they drove up the A9 from Perthshire to the Highlands and the sensation of running from a deadly threat returned to him? It wasn’t fair to put Nicola and the children through that, never mind himself.

“We can take turns driving,” Nicola reminded him.

Malcolm said nothing in reply; he got out of the car and went to Bella’s door and knocked. Seconds later, Euan opened the door and let him in, Nicola and the kids still getting their shit together behind him. “Aye, min,” Euan said. “Aoife’s ben the hoose shiting a brick.”

“Bet she is,” sighed Malcolm.

“Bella’s in the kitchen. Sweet chilli chicken and rice for tea,” Euan said. He looked bewildered by the very idea of it. “Apparently stew’s no’ good enough for the city hantle.”

Malcolm grimaced to himself. He’d had a feeling that Bella might try and disguise her working-class, Traveller roots from an unknown visitor. Maybe he was the one being naïve here, but he didn’t understand why she was so threatened by the thought of an outsider in her home. The fact that he could not put himself in her shoes still bothered him; there was still that absence of a connection between their lives.

There was another knock at the door and, seemingly out of nowhere, Aoife pushed past them to the front door. The voice that said, “Hi, Aoife,” was vaguely familiar to Malcolm. When he looked over Aoife’s shoulder and saw it was, he struggled not to burst out laughing. Bella was going to lose her fucking mind. From a professional point of view, it wasn’t ideal, but Malcolm couldn’t see any catastrophes on the horizon. “Oh, fuck,” he couldn’t help but chuckle.

Euan joined him, standing at his side. “Isn’t that-”

“Yes,” Nicola said behind them. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

Euan was the first to break; he wandered back to the kitchen, practically in fucking tears he was laughing so hard. “Come in,” Malcolm beckoned them down the hallway. “Come and get a drink. Bella’s making sweet chilli chicken.” Aoife was even paler than usual, like the enormity of what she was doing had just hit her fair smack in the gut.

Bella had her back to them as she stood over the cooker. “Bella, that’s wur dinner guest here,” Euan said with a thoroughly satisfied smirk.

Malcolm stepped aside and Bella turned around to face them all. “Hey, Bella,” Laura Brown said quite sheepishly.

It wasn’t often Bella Whyte was left speechless, so when the moment came, her husband, father and stepmother had to fully appreciate the entire scene before them, including the smell of chicken starting to burn in the pan; Ella jumped in to save that situation while Bella tried to find her words. Euan descended into uproarious laughter, handing Laura a glass of wine.

To Malcolm’s surprise, though, Bella stalked out of the kitchen, leaving Ella to tend to the food. It must have been unexpected to Euan as well, because he looked to Malcolm and Nicola like he had never seen his wife do that. “I’ll go,” muttered Malcolm.

He found Bella out in the front garden, the door left ajar behind her. “What’s with the fucking dramatic exit?” he asked her.

She turned to glare at him accusingly. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”

“That Aoife’s gay? Yeah,” he confessed. “She told me a while back.”

“No, you fuckwit, that my advisor is shagging my au pair!” Bella snarled. “I’m no’ giein’ a fuck that Aoife’s gay!”

“Oh,” Malcolm said, realising what had wound Bella up. “No, I didn’t know Aoife was seeing Laura. I was as surprised as you.”

“Don’t fucking count on it.”

“Look, they’ve both got their heads screwed on, haven’t they? I can’t see it going tits up,” he explained. “Just go in there and treat them the same way you always have. Nothing’s really fucking changed. They’re still just Aoife and Laura.”

Bella still did not look amused, but she went back into the house and greeted Laura properly; the world was not burning to the ground. Not yet, anyway.


	21. Summer Holiday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...have tonsillitis. I'm also flying back home for a week on Wednesday, so lets hope the tonsillitis fucks off by then. But given my previous history with tonsillitis, I'm not optimistic.
> 
> In other news, after going to Wicklow to look at tents, my host dad has spent nearly a grand on a tent the size of a small house. I'm starting to think he's finally cracked.

The first time the newly decorated calm room – previously Katie’s bedroom – was put into use was the day the House of Commons went into recess. The whole family, plus Bella, and Malcolm’s sister via phone, sat to discuss what they would do over the summer.

“You could come down here,” Malcolm suggested to Verity. It was one of the few ways he might have avoided going to Scotland.

“I can’t,” Verity sighed. “Erin goes back to school on the sixteenth, and Adam’s away up to Skye for some stupid hiking thing with his pals. Climbing the Cuillins or something. Marsco, Quirang, Old Man of Storr, all that stuff. Fucking stopped listening thirty seconds after he mentioned a ‘lads’ holiday’ if I’m honest. And somebody’s got to look after Mum.”

Bella sat up straighter and looked at the phone. “Well, me and Euan were gonna go on the road for a couple of weeks and head north ‘til we get to Skye. What if we did that, spent some time on Skye, and then stopped in Glasgow for a couple of days on the way back to London?” she suggested.

Malcolm wanted to put a stop to their planning. He hadn’t prepared himself to return to Glasgow, to his mum and his sister. That was one step too far.

“That’s actually a good idea,” Nicola said slowly. “Though we’d struggle to find a hotel in Portree this late into the season.”

“Stay in the hotel,” Bella said. “Euan’s hotel. There’s a family sized suite on the ground floor. He usually uses it for the live-in staff but there’s not very many of them this season. They’re all in the rooms in the front.”

“When is Adam going to be on Skye?” asked Nicola. “Maybe Malcolm and Euan can catch up with him.” Malcolm groaned internally. Were they actively trying to make this a shit holiday?

“He comes back the day after Erin goes back to school. Think he’s there about ten days,” Verity replied. Malcolm wondered how big a row there had been over Adam fucking off for a third of the school holidays _and_ missing Erin’s first day back.

“Right, well, Euan wants to start heading up on Monday. Dad, you can join us whenever,” Bella added to Malcolm.

He hesitated. “I think we should spend some time together at home first,” he said carefully. “What about you guys go and we’ll meet you somewhere, camp overnight, and then we’ll all go to Portree?” He looked around at Nicola, Ella, Sophie and Ben. Though the children were fairly laid back about the whole thing, or at least appeared to be, Nicola could clearly see through his suggestions to the fact there were other reasons for his desire to cut any trip to Scotland short. “And we’ll stop at Mum’s on the way back,” he yielded under the pressure of Nicola’s raised eyebrow.

“That sounds a decent plan,” Verity said; she sounded a little more cheerful.

Malcolm, in what was one last attempt to put an end to the plan, said to Nicola, “It might be tough on you and the kids to go back to Scotland. Are you sure you’re up for it?”

Nicola looked at their children, who, to Malcolm’s dismay, all smiled and nodded. “We’ll be okay,” Sophie said, so quietly that he barely heard her.

“Yeah,” Nicola said, like the matter was settled once and for all. “We’ll be alright.”

* * *

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Malcolm exclaimed. He, Sophie and Ben had been sitting in the car for nearly quarter of an hour now; Nicola had insisted last night that she had packed everything she needed and yet was still packing. Ella was looking for a pair of shoes she probably wasn’t even going to fucking wear anyway.

Ben sniggered, while Sophie waited quietly and patiently for her mother and sister.

“Ben, go in there and tell them to get a fucking move on, would you?”

The boy, with a grin, got out of the car; he went to the front door of the house, opened it, and bellowed, “Dad says you’ve to get a fucking move on!”

Sophie giggled in the back of the car while Malcolm pressed his forehead against the driver’s side window. He ought to have known Ben would take that instruction literally. Through the open door, Malcolm could see Nicola stand on the stairs, small suitcase in hand, as she said in her strictest tone, “Watch your language, young man!”

“I’m just the messenger boy!” he replied.

Ben ran back into the car; through his exasperation, Malcolm was hard pushed not to laugh. Nicola and Ella appeared a couple of minutes later, this time fully packed, and they finally were able to leave for Scotland. They had decided they would pitch a camp overnight at Dunkeld rather than make the drive from London to Portree in a single day. That westbound road was a death trap, especially to a tired driver.

Malcolm had still not admitted his reasons for his reservations about this trip; there was no getting out of going, and there was no way he could come clean about his fears as this late stage. Though reasonably calm as they left London, he did not trust it to last, particularly once they crossed the border.

Once or twice, Malcolm thought he saw a taint in Nicola’s smiles and looks – one that meant she knew his true objection was not the length of the drive. It wasn’t long before she started to gently prod and question him. “Are you going to be alright?” she asked. “If you want me to take over, just say so.”

“I’m fine,” he said. And, at that moment, it was the truth. Despite his anxieties about the holiday, he was able to remember that nobody was in jeopardy and they were going to have a well-deserved break.

“If you’re not, Malcolm, please tell me.”

“Is this about me, or is this you trying to tell me _you’re_ not fine?” he challenged her. When he spared her a split-second glance at a red light, he instantly realised he had hit the nail right on the head. “Fuck’s sake, Nic’la, why didn’t you say something? We had a proper fucking family meeting about whether we should go or not!” It was with a slow, deep breath that Malcolm reminded himself not to get angry. After all, he knew better than most that these things were not straightforward or easy to predict. “We can turn around and go home. Go for a break on the continent or something.”

“No,” Nicola said. “Fucking hell, Malcolm, no. You’re Scottish. Bella’s Scottish. All of your relatives are up in Scotland. We can’t just refuse to go when half the extended family lives there. We’ve got to do it sooner or later, and it’s better we do it on our own terms.”

He saw the logic. In theory, it sounded the most sensible thing they could do in the situation they’d been landed in. But nothing was ever so simple in practice. However, there was a determined finality in her voice that let him know she would not be moved. To try and move her would only cause a fight, and they’d had more than enough of those this year; he was going to have to trust that she was right, but be prepared to deal with the consequences if she was wrong. Wasn’t that how marriage was supposed to work?

The biggest difference between their previous visit to Dunkeld and this one – aside from the lack of imminent mortal peril – was that Nicola was now fit to camp. This meant they would not be staying with Tot, for which Malcolm was eternally thankful. Even though she was probably (he dared to assume) a good woman, her demeanour on a good day was as brutal as his on a bad day.

It was August now, too; the brittle cold at the start and end of the day had been replaced by clouds of bloodthirsty and remorseless midges. The kids were sure to hate that, and Bella probably would find it hilarious.

Scotland appeared far too soon for Malcolm’s liking. They stopped at Lockerbie for something to eat. As they sat at a picnic bench with snacks in the afternoon sun, Malcolm caught Nicola eyeing him with deep concern. He almost told her to cut it the fuck out there and then, but refrained so as to prevent an argument. Beneath the irritation, he did know she behaved this way only out of love.

Love was an infuriating presence, really. It caused them to indulge their own bad habits: watching one another like hawks and biting their tongues when they ought to speak. It was messy and filled with problems and self-made obstacles, purely because it was just so fucking complicated to give a fuck about another person.

But it was love that made Malcolm relent when they headed back to the car; he pressed the keys into Nicola’s hand. She gave him a knowing smile and kissed his cheek. There was no need to talk about it. Not when she had known before he had that he must give himself a break.

Ella, over the course of the journey, had turned silent, which worried Malcolm. Was she going to cope? She had suffered hugely, and going north might have triggered some kind of reaction in her. She’d seen death and experienced utter terror; even the journey itself could have brought her distress. “You okay?” he quietly asked her while her siblings climbed into the car ahead of them.

Ella looked up at him. “I’ll be fine.”

But her eyes were too bright and her skin too pale; he could see the anxiety was kicking in. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

He watched the mask crack. A tear rolled down Ella’s cheek, and she said, “I know it won’t happen again. I know that. It just _feels_ like before. Like we’re running.”

Malcolm sighed and put his arms around Ella. It was at moments like these, when she gave up her defences, that he felt most protective of her. “I know,” he murmured into the top of her head. “But we aren’t running. We’re on holiday. We’re here to spend time together and enjoy ourselves.”

She nodded into his chest and held herself close to him. He looked up and saw Nicola approach them. “What’s wrong?” she asked, the threat of panic evident in her face.

“Ella’s just feeling a bit tender,” Malcolm said. “Wee bit of a ghost, that’s all.”

It sounded ridiculous but that was the only way he could word the sensation he knew so well himself. It was the ghost of a feeling long since gone, and it haunted the mind like the most malevolent spirit.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Nicola said gently. “Nothing is going to happen to us.”

“I know that, Mum.”

“But unfortunately, panic doesn’t give a flying fuck about logic, does it?” Malcolm reasoned. “Just keep breathing. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Worst thing you might have to deal with is rain and midges,” added Nicola.

Ella let out a tearful laugh.

“And it might take a few days before you stop smelling like a campfire,” he chipped in. “But that’s about as bad as it’s gonna get.”

Ella smiled and wiped her tears away. “Okay,” she said as she slowly exhaled. “Okay. I’m alright. Let’s go.”

Nicola patted Ella’s back. “Go and get yourself into the car. We’ll be there in a minute.” When Ella walked away to the car to join Sophie and Ben, Nicola rounded on Malcolm. “Are _you_ okay?” she asked of him; her face and her voice were both soft and kind, and he momentarily was hit by the thought that he did not deserve his wife’s kindness.

Malcolm swallowed the word, “No.” He didn’t say it, even though he’d been told he needed to say it more often.

It turned out, though, that he didn’t need to say it. Not to Nicola. She pulled him down into a tight hug. “Everything’s alright, Malcolm. It’s just a holiday.”

This, he remembered, was the reason he had married her in the first place. In spite of their flaws and their differences, she knew him. She knew how best to love him, but still he could show her love without feeling utterly defenceless. The only way he knew he could thank her was to kiss her on the lips, but he did so with more force than he first intended. It was a surprise, therefore, when she kissed him back just as urgently, her arms around his neck and her body pressed against his.

“Oi!” a voice shouted. Malcolm looked up from Nicola to see Ben’s head sticking out of the car window. “Are we going on holiday or are we gonna have to sit here and watch you two snog instead?!”

They couldn’t help but laugh. It was such a moment of normality, for a child to protest at seeing his parents kissing, but that was what made it so memorable. Normal family moments had been few and far between. So Malcolm leaned down and kissed Nicola’s jaw, and they went to the car. “Any more cheek from you and you’re cooking dinner tonight,” Malcolm threatened Ben.

Ben wasn’t the first to object. “I don’t want food poisoning, thanks!” Ella shouted indignantly. Malcolm turned in the passenger seat to look at his children, and to flash them his most evil grin – which had never scared any of them. All it ever did was invite them to partake in some mischief.

“Nah. I’d say if there’s anybody who’d put us at risk of food poisoning, it’s Mum,” he smirked at Nicola. “She’s bad enough in a fucking fully equipped kitchen. Could you see the state of any food she makes in a camp?”

Sophie, Ben and Ella started to laugh; Malcolm turned and winked at Nicola, who elbowed him for his impudence. Though they didn’t let on to the kids, they’d already planned to go to the chip shop for dinner that night, since nobody was going to be in the humour for cooking and Bella was sure to want a break from it after nearly a fortnight on the road. He couldn’t see her allowing Euan to cook anything more complex than lorne, bacon and beans.

Suddenly, with his family here around him, Scotland didn’t seem as frightening a place.


	22. A Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! It's been a long one. Went home for a week to a proper shit show. Met one of my long-lost uncles. Dressed up for Halloween for the first time in a decade. My host family planning something for my birthday tomorrow but I can't even get the five-year-old to spit it out - all I get is, "Mammy said it's a secret." Fun times!

The smell of campfire smoke was intoxicating. It brought Malcolm back to his youth, of nights spent at Skeabost with the Stewart family, with Bella’s mother and grandparents. He often allowed himself to forget how good Bella’s grandparents were to him during those few months on Skye, and other times he considered reaching out to them. They were fucking bizarre people, though, and not without their faults. They were the people who hid Bella from him and him from Bella. That was a grudge he would never quite forgive, for he missed out on too much. Not to mention Bella’s grandfather, Charlie, who was well-known in his community for being…well, less than sensible and sane.

The air was so clean but for the campfire, and the sky so open. The Earth was firmly below his feet, regardless of what else he might feel.

“I’m no’ too fond o’ thon uncle o’ yours,” Euan said to Bella, his loud, deep voice dragging Malcolm back into the present moment. “He’s the sort who’d cry ye tinker dirt and bleach ye aboot the mooth if ye crossed ‘im.”

“Adam?” snorted Bella. “He’s yer typical scaldie but he’s no’ got in in ‘im tae strike naeb’dy.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Malcolm told them. “I’ve seen him in a couple of fights. He’s pretty fucking handy when he wants to be.”

“Malcolm, what do you want for your dinner?” Nicola asked.

“I’ll come with you,” he replied, following her to the car. Truthfully, he simply wanted a few minutes alone with his wife; it had been a hectic few months, and their relationship was not at all strengthened by their lack of alone time. Nicola got into the driver’s seat and smiled at him.

And in that chip shop, awaiting their mountain of deep-fried food, Malcolm could not recall feeling so _normal_. Not just in the duration of his marriage to Nicola, but in years. Since adolescence. Was his life really such a mess? “You alright?” Nicola asked him. She must have read more into his silence than he remembered writing.

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat quietly. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

“About?”

“About how far from fucking reasonable and normal my life is.”

“I know it’s been a hard couple of years but we-”

Malcolm leaned back against the white tiled wall, his arm touching Nicola’s shoulder. “Not us. Before us. My job entails ripping people to fucking shreds while the stress of their fucking idiotic behaviour crushes my skull from the inside out. I haven’t been back to Glasgow in fuck only knows how long. I’ve married a woman who’s got enough fucking baggage to keep Ryanair in business for a decade. I’ve even got a daughter – three, actually, and a son – I never intended to have,” he rambled on. “You know I always fucking swore I’d never have kids?” From the look in Nicola’s eyes, she didn’t know how to take that. “Not that I don’t love them,” he added hastily. “Fuck me, I love them half to death.”

“Why? They all love you.”

“I promised myself I’d never put any child through having me for a father. I’m not father material, Nic’la – you must’ve realised that by now. Plus my genetics must be pretty fucked up, if what Mum says about my dad is anything to go by. I knew there was something wrong with us all. I didn’t want to pass that on.”

“But you were so _angry_ ,” Nicola said. “You were fucking furious with Bernadette and her mother for keeping Bella from you.”

“I just wish they’d given me the chance to fucking try.”

“The way you just put it sounds like they’d have been right not to give you a chance,” she pointed out.

Malcolm looked down at her. “Before us, I would have believed that. If you’ve taught me anything, it’s that everybody deserves at least one fucking chance to defy who they think they are.” He allowed his wife a soft smile; she took his hand and squeezed it tight.

In the car back to the camp, with paper packages burning his lap, Malcolm realised he had been wrong about who he was from the very beginning. He’d told himself he was fucking evil, that he was long past redemption, that only his mother and sister could ever love him – and only because there was an obligation to.

Nicola parked the car on the edge of the camp and cut the engine. “You gave me a chance,” she murmured. Malcolm turned to look at her, not bothering to try and hide his disguise. “When Katie died, you gave me a chance to prove I was strong enough to get my kids through losing their big sister. You took all the other strains – the press, my health, your health, James, DoSAC – and gave me the chance to be the person I needed to be for them. I didn’t even know I _could_ be that woman.”

“I did,” Malcolm replied. “The night James locked you in the cupboard under the stairs, I knew you had it in you to get everybody through it. You came out of that cupboard and pretended you were fine, for them. You underestimated your ability. You always do.”

She stared at him for a moment, and ten said quite abruptly, “Come on, before the food gets cold. If you can call deep-fried white pudding food.”

“Don’t fucking miscall my white pudding supper!” he protested as he got out of the car, laden with food. “Better than what I could’ve got.”

“What’s that?”

“Pizza crunch.”

“Do I even want to know what that is?” Nicola asked, her face screwed up at the very thought.

“Probably not,” he grinned.

The way the kids all ravaged through their meals, anyone would’ve thought they’d not been fed in days. They sat together and chatted while they ate; Malcolm was surprised they were all so well-behaved. Ella, however, sat with the adults. For the most part, she remained quiet. She spoke only to tell the story of the time she and Katie had sat at the bedroom window, sneakily throwing water balloons at the trick-or-treaters on Halloween night. Nicola, it transpired, had never known about it, and told Ella she was never to do it again. Ella simply smirked into her mug of tea.

There wasn’t much to do but talk. It was the most they’d talked in months. There were no distractions here, and no alcohol. This was an experience of togetherness Malcolm hadn’t felt before; he was not an outsider. Everyone here had a place in the family, even him. Even cruel, flawed, wounded, guarded, fucked up Malcolm Tucker.

* * *

Rain pounded against the tent walls in a brutal August downpour. Through the half-light, Malcolm squinted at his watch; it was about half-past five in the morning. “You awake?” Nicola mumbled.

“Kind of,” Malcolm replied, though he could feel his body sliding backwards towards sleep.

“What time is it?”

“Half-five.”

Nicola shuffled around to face him. “This rain is ridiculous.”

“In Scotland, we call it summer.” She smiled and kissed him gently. “And you better get fucking used to it. Skye isn’t a Mediterranean paradise, you know.”

“I’d heard.” She reached out and took his hand. “Don’t you miss Scotland?”

Malcolm hadn’t been expecting to be asked that question, and so had no answer ready and waiting. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Sometimes I wish I could get the fuck out of London, anyway.”

“What do you miss about it?”

He frowned at her. “What’s the sudden interest?”

“It’s not something I really understand. I’ve never lived so far from where I came from,” she explained.

“Well, I miss some of the food,” he said, trying to evade anything that might lead to a proper conversation on the subject; he didn’t want to discuss his family. “I miss having the right to roam. I miss the weather.” Nicola started to laugh. “No, seriously! Summer in London is far too fucking hot.”

“And winter in Scotland is far too fucking cold,” she retorted. “And the snow!”

“The problem isn’t the snow. It’s the fucking morons who don’t respect what it’s capable of, they’re the problem.” He pulled her in closer. “C’mon, we’ll try and get another couple hours’ sleep.”

* * *

The drive from Dunkeld to Portree was a long one; the quickest and easiest route was one that followed the same route north they’d taken while running from James, right up to the estate in which he had died. But to travel via Inverness would add unnecessary driving, and to go by Glencoe would take even longer. He didn’t know whether to warn Nicola and the children that they would be taking that road; would it given them time to prepare themselves or just given them time to work themselves up?

In the end, Malcolm said nothing. They would only overthink it until it was a monster with trees for limbs and hills for a torso and a castle for a head and water for eyes, when in reality, it was just a place. That was what he told himself, at least.

And it worked, for as long as he remained on the A9. After all, the A9 was the artery that ran right through the middle of Scotland – it was so vast that he associated it mostly with Scotland, tourists and really shit drivers. It was when he left the A9, when he turned off into the village of Dalwhinnie, that the fear began to creep in. And those seven miles to Laggan, the next village, were the longest seven miles of road he knew, even without the memories attached to it.

He stopped at the public toilets in Dalwhinnie and sat alone in the car after Nicola and the kids got out. Clearly, he had fucking overestimated his own ability to toughen up. The panic and fear he remembered crawled through his veins like a parasite that wanted every ounce of his sanity. There were about twenty miles to drive before he was clear of the area that did this to him. And if it had this effect on him, how was it going to affect everyone else?

If he turned back onto the A9 now, he could drive up to Inverness and over by Achnasheen and Strathcarron, the route that the railway followed. But it would take longer, and they would want to know why they were driving back on themselves. And then Bella would wonder why they lagged so far behind despite leaving ahead of them, and he would have to admit that a stretch of road had got the better of him.

Nicola, Ella, Sophie and Ben returned to the car, and Malcolm followed the original plan; the dread set in deeper with every passing moment, the anvil crushing his chest with exponentially growing weight. His knuckles were white with his vice-like grip on the steering wheel, and his heart felt like it might jump out of his throat. He clenched his jaw so hard that his whole face ached.

Until, about halfway through the seven miles to the junction, Nicola said quietly, “Pull over.”

“I can’t. Do you see fucking anywhere that’s safe to stop here?” he snapped at her impatiently.

“Calm down, Malcolm.”

He turned to glower at her. “I’ll pull over at the next layby. Think the next one’s at Catlodge.”

“Alright,” she said. “Stop at Catlodge, then.”

So, he did. He pulled over into the Catlodge layby and looked at his wife for an explanation. “Why the fuck-” he started to say, but he didn’t get very far.

“Get out. I’m driving.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

In the rear-view mirror, he saw his children exchange looks of uncertainty, but they did not seem worried. They trusted their mother. “Why?”

Nicola only gave him a knowing look, like she could see his heart in his throat and feel the ache in his face. Resigned to the fact an argument would only cause more anxiety, and that she would win in the end either way, he silently unclipped his seatbelt and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. They met in front of the car; Nicola blocked his path. “Take a moment,” she told him. “You’re as grey as the road.”

“I’m fine.”

“Liar.”

The pressure on his chest started to ease; how had she known? But he couldn’t ask her that. Instead, he told her, “You don’t know how to get to Skye.”

“I’ve got my grumpy old navigator,” she assured him with a smile. “We can swap at the bridge, okay?” He nodded his head, slightly embarrassed that he had allowed this to happen. “You should have said we’d be going this way.”

“I didn’t want to get your fucking knickers in a knot.”

She shook her head slightly. “Malcolm, I could’ve told you this would happen. Believe it or not, you’ve got worse memories attached to this place than I do. You got shot. All the trouble with Ella started here, and she swore you to secrecy. You were under far greater strain than I was. I was just doing as I was told for most of it.”

He still didn’t know how, but she knew. She knew how his mind painted this road and this part of the country. “Thanks,” he said, so low that he wasn’t sure she heard him.

She reached up and kissed his cheek. “Come on, get in the car. And don’t give me shit directions.”

“I don’t give shit directions! I give accurate directions. You just never fucking follow them. That’s how we end up lost!”

Nicola grinned; he realised now she was joking. “Get in the car.”


	23. Follow, They Will Not Dare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aloha! Last chapter of part four!
> 
> News from Ireland: my stay has been extended indefinitely as my host-grandmother has asked me to move in with her in January to help her with her 91-year-old mother and generally help her not lose her mind.
> 
> News from Scotland: my brother plans on asking his girlfriend to marry him, which means I better spend my month at home working on not hating her. Ozzy the spaniel has stolen a shirt, a lighter and several bras, none of which my mum can find; they're probably outside getting rainsoaked as I type.

“ _Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing_ ,” his mother had once sung to him, “ _‘Onward!’ the sailors cry. Carry the lad that’s born to be King, over the sea to Skye_ …”

Malcolm had always known that song was about the escape of Charles Edward Stuart and Flora MacDonald. He had known it referred to the Battle of Culloden, that it was a song of smuggling a prince from Uist to Skye in the aftermath of colossal defeat.

But he had always taken it to heart, ever since he was a child. “ _Baffled, our foes stand by the shore; follow they will not dare_ ,” he sang under his breath as he stood at the war memorial on Somerled Square.

Portree probably would never change beyond his recognition. From where he looked, he could see the hotel, the inn, the police house, the court house, the Clydesdale Bank and Banca na h-Alba all stood where they did three decades ago. The old folk still held conversations in Gaelic and Skye Camanachd was still just around the corner. One of the few things that had changed was the sheer number of tourists; he could see how that could quickly become wearisome. That, and the rain. Even as the sun shone, the sky still threatened him with fucking rain.

Nicola came to his side and took his hand. “You miss this place, don’t you?” she asked.

“Like a fucking hole in the head,” he scoffed.

But that was a downright lie. There had been a time he could have easily bypassed university and settled here. Even now, he could see the appeal.

Adam Crichton, Malcolm’s brother-in-law, approached. Now there was a man he really did miss like a fucking hole in the head. The only reason he put up with Adam was that Verity loved the cunt, whatever her reasons might be. Personally, Malcolm had always thought him a bit of an arrogant twat.

“Well, what’s the craic?” he asked, shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket.

“Not a lot,” Malcolm replied. “Just waiting on Euan.”

“Maybe we should get going without him,” suggested Adam. “Surely he knows where the pub is. Or is he so illiterate that he can’t read the sign?”

Nicola looked taken aback, but this was the kind of shit joke Malcolm had come to expect of Adam. Of course, Malcolm knew his own sense of humour was warped and probably a bit cruel, but he didn’t do what Adam did. Malcolm learned to hate people for who they were, not what they were. There was only one reason Adam had made a joke about Euan being illiterate, despite knowing Euan ran a hotel and was the husband of the Scottish Secretary – he thought it was amusing to make the insinuation that Travellers were universally stupid and uneducated.

“He can read the signs,” Malcolm retorted. “He can read the Gaelic ones, too, which is more than any of us can say.”

Malcolm turned away from a disgruntled Adam to see Euan come around the corner from the newsagents; he’d never been so relieved to see his son-in-law, if only to distract him from demolishing Adam. Euan raised his hand when he spotted his family and half-jogged across the road to them.

When he reached them, Euan slapped Malcolm’s shoulder, hugged Nicola and offered his hand to Adam, who took it with obvious reluctance. Malcolm had not told Adam until this afternoon that Euan would be joining them for a drink this evening; he didn’t think the twat deserved the opportunity to wriggle out of it, and there was no valid reason for Euan to be excluded. He’d wanted to come, despite his wariness of Adam, and there was no way Malcolm would allow Adam to come between him and Euan. “Right!” Euan grinned, clapping his hands together. It couldn’t be clearer that he was in the mood for a proper island piss up. The kind where they stumbled up to Rathad na h-Áirigh at three in the morning and Bella scolded them for their hangovers when they woke at noon. “Tae the Caley!”

“Fuck’s sake,” Adam muttered. “The inn’s closer.”

“Aye, by aboot twenty yards!” Euan said. “It’s just over there.” He pointed to his right, indicating to the general direction of the pub, though it was hidden by the corner of the hotel opposite.

“The inn’s full of fucking reprobates,” Malcolm told him. “I’d rather a wee walk than be surrounded by scumbags. I get enough of them at work!” Nicola raised her eyebrows at him, forcing him to add, “Present company and their wives excluded.”

“Caley it is, then,” Nicola said, probably so that nobody started arguing over their quite limited choice of drinking spots.

So they sauntered along to Wentworth Street and up the flight of stairs to the pub. A cover band was playing; from what Malcolm could hear from the steps, they were decent. “I’ll go for the drinks,” Euan offered. “What’ll it be?”

“Pint and a dram for me,” Adam instantly answered.

“Just a dram,” Malcolm said.

“White wine,” Nicola chipped in. “Thanks!”

Once Euan went away to the bar, the other three went for a table. “Watch yer step,” Malcolm said in an undertone to Adam; he dropped his use of proper English to speak to him as equals, to make a threat. “Anither dig at Euan an’ I’ll lay ye oot, ye wee shite.” Never had Malcolm sounded so much like Annie. He could just about hear his mother’s voice come out of his own mouth.

Nicola must have heard him, because she kicked him in the shin under the table and glared at him. He wanted to tell her that someone had to warn Adam, but he couldn’t explain to her right now exactly what his joke about Euan had meant – he got the impression that the racial implications of it had gone straight over Nicola’s head.

Malcolm got up to help Euan over with the drinks. “No fucking idea why my sister married that fucking retard,” he grumbled to Euan. “Hasn’t grown up in quarter of a fucking century.”

“Neither have I,” laughed Euan.

“Aye, but you weren’t born a prick.”

“Naeb’dy’s born a prick,” Euan reasoned. “That’s somethin’ yeh’ve tae work at.”

“Just makes it fucking worse!”

Euan laughed and picked up three of the drinks in between his two hands; Malcolm took Adam’s pint and Nicola’s wine.

The evening passed amicably enough. Euan chose to ignore Adam’s jibes, though Malcolm wondered how far it could go before even good-humoured Euan snapped. It was almost like a battlefield, waiting for one belligerent to cry the attack. “It’s a point of principle,” Adam said well into his third pint, “that if you live here, you live by our rules.”

“What you’re talking about is a social expectation, not the law,” Nicola pointed out calmly. “If someone wants to go to a mosque or they want to have a conversation in a foreign language, why should that be any of your business?”

“What does it do to the weans when they cut about Glasgow and see things like that though? All this religion and abnormality.” argued Adam.

“What, you mean when they see other human beings going about their lives?” she said, her tone sharp now. “It never did my children any harm.”

“And then there’s the fucking Irish. They brought the Catholic Church over with them.”

Malcolm nearly choked on his drink. “Are you fucking slow?” he asked incredulously. “Mary Queen of Scots was Catholic!” A piece of information he’d picked up from a housemate at university returned to him. “Fucking hell, the Crichtons gave the Church the bishops of Dunkeld! They were part of the push back against the Reformation!”

Adam went a bit red; Malcolm realised now that he had shown his brother-in-law up for his lack of knowledge, but he couldn’t bring himself to give a fuck. What right did he have to complain when he knew so little?

Just so he didn’t thump Adam for being so utterly idiotic, Malcolm took Nicola by the hand and crossed the pub to the dancefloor. “You don’t dance,” Nicola reminded him.

“I do when my only other option is murdering that fucking stupid cunt,” Malcolm growled. “Is there any group of people he _does_ fucking like?”

“White British Protestants,” Nicola suggested. “Preferably male ones who live in square houses.”

Malcolm couldn’t help but smile. He began to calm down, and realised what song the cover band was playing. “ _My tears are drying; my tears are drying; thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. My tears are drying; my tears are drying; your beauty and kindness made tears clear my blindness_.”

He leaned down and gently kissed Nicola; he could feel her smile into his lips while they danced – or at least stepped slowly around the floor together. “ _While I’m worth my room on this Earth, I will be with you. While the Chief puts sunshine on Leith, I’ll thank Him for his work, and my birth, and your birth_ …”

Over Nicola’s shoulder, Malcolm watched Adam and Euan. Whatever they were talking about, it was getting heated. Euan was on his feet, walking away towards the stairs. The band obviously noticed, too, because they stopped playing mid-song. “Get back here, ye filthy mink!” Adam shouted across the pub, just as the band stopped playing. He was standing now, too, and advancing towards Euan.

“Maybe I’m a mink, but a scaldie’s but a fool,” Euan said. “Rather a mink than a daft auld scaldie like you.”

Adam pulled back and punched Euan square in the face. Euan stumbled but caught his balance and said, “Awright, let’s no’, eh? Nae need fur it!” But Adam wasn’t having that. He grabbed a handful of Euan’s t-shirt and punched him again, this time much harder; Malcolm heard an unsettling crunch he thought must have been Euan’s nose cracking.

Any restraint Malcolm had held onto up until now was gone. “Leave him!” he shouted at Adam. “Fucking leave him, ye clown!”

Adam let Euan go and turned on Malcolm. “How? You wantin’ a fight an’ all?” he snapped. “You and your dirty wee tink of a daughter and the fucking Fenian babysitter? What a fucking rid-up you lot are!”

“The fuck did you just say?!” Malcolm roared at Adam. Nicola tried to come between them, but Malcolm didn’t register what she was telling him. He barely felt the pressure of her hands on his chest. She shouted at Euan to intervene, but he didn’t. Maybe Euan wanted Malcolm to break Adam’s jaw as much as Malcolm himself did.

“Malcolm, look at me! Stop this. It’s not worth hurting anybody!” Nicola yelled, still trying to separate him and Adam.

“He fucking punched Euan! Called Bella-”

“I know what he said. Believe me, I fucking heard him. But what good will it do to hit him?” she asked. Why did she want logic when all his fists wanted to do was punch the man who stood and sneered in front of him?

“It’ll make me _feel_ better!” Malcolm told her. He didn’t understand how he was able to talk, but he heard the words leave him.

Adam stood behind Nicola; she could not see the arrogant smirk or the words he mouthed at her back: “’Mon then!”

There was only one thing for it. Malcolm lunged around Nicola and knocked her out of the way. She immediately pushed herself between them again. “Don’t be so daft! Don’t descend to that level!” Nicola implored him. Malcolm ignored her and tried to smack Adam again, but Adam took an infuriatingly jaunty step backwards, knowing Malcolm could not get at him with Nicola in his path. But Malcolm managed to stretch over his wife – he was significantly taller than she was – and take Adam by the hoodie.

He felt Nicola beneath his arm, still fighting to hold him off, yelling at Euan to come and help her again, but again Euan refused. Malcolm took that refusal as permission from his son-in-law to even the scales of bodily damage between the two of them.

The bemused look on Adam’s face put Malcolm in mind of one thing: _Baffled, our foes stand by the shore; follow they will not dare_.


End file.
